A bit marginal, perhaps, but I've found myself unexpectedly *obsessed* by the journalist James Delingpole's podcast The Delingpod.
It's odd, and it won't be to everyone's taste here. But it's fascinating, and I hope you give him a try. James is a former mainstream journalist, right of centre, who wrote somewhat lightweight pieces for several big papers - so, a named columnist with a lot to lose.
But during the pandemic he smelled a big rat, went massively "off-message", found Jesus, and is now fighting what he sees (as many here do, too) as the coming totalitarian night. His journey has been rapid, radical and very destabilising to his own life - but inspiring, too. Some of his views are frankly odd, but others are growing on me fast, and some of his guests are extraordinary. I've been struck in particular by Simon Elmer, Miri AF, Scrumpmonkey, Brian Gerrish, John Waters, but so many others, too. His sessions with his brother Dick are utterly lovely - daft, divagatory, teasing - and they model (for me) what a brotherly relationship could be.
Who knew... that a right-wing gadfly with (ordinarily) an assured mainstream career could find a depth of integrity and grow up into one of the most courageous, fearless and open-minded voices of our dark times. As if PG Wodehouse woke up one morning to find himself morphed not into a beetle but into George Orwell.
I’ve picked up his journey from listening to his podcasts, where he’ll give details of his journey from time to time. He really has given up a lot, burned many bridges: he knew Johnson, Cameron, Gove et al as actual friends at Oxford and beyond, and would have had a comfortable career for the rest of his life had he wanted it. In his mid-50s - tricky time - he threw it away because of what he saw as the obvious lies of governments over Covid to dive into a real search for the truth about what is happening in our world, who is pushing it all forward and why, and this has taken him down most of what he calls the “rabbit holes.”
It’s not really for me to advocate for him like some fanboy, but catching up with 100+ of his podcasts has certainly changed me, and introduced me to some very compelling and authentic new voices and new ideas I’d possibly not have met at all, and not in such a short space. His manner might be a bit fey for some people’s taste - private school and Christ Church don’t just vanish from the nervous system - but he’s honest and sincere, and not a shill for anyone. (I hope…!)
Amazing - thanks for the heads up. I knew Delingpole very slightly 10 or so years ago, when he was still banging about the neocon/american "conservative" crowd (the Republican Party calls itself conservative, but it isn't and it never has been. There is not a "conservative party" in the "united states."
I used to enjoy listening to him about a decade ago, but gradually tuned out when the Right (of which I'm still somewhat a part, albeit a disaffected one) went bonkers. He was always at his best when he was NOT talking politics. I'm now quite curious where he's at.
He’s completely different…. Basically, he’s into what used to be called conspiracy theories, but which now seem to be emerging as conspiracy facts. Even if you think that worldview is off the rails, his guests are well worth listening to.
Jules, thanks for the tip on Delingpole. See my separate comment posted this evening about Max Azzarello as a sign for our times. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.
Mary Harrington makes a clever and mostly convincing argument regarding the impossibility of reconciling what she calls bio-liberterianism with socialised health care. In a situation where resources are limited there will not a possibility of unlimited "gender" interventions because resources will be prioritised otherwise if the public have a say. Generally I think this is true, however, there is also the possibility of health care systems getting hijacked, and this has certainly happened. In countries with nationalised health care, such as Sweden (which was at the forefront of "gender" medical intervention for young people for a while) and Britain, there is now luckily a backtracking as the wider public becomes aware of what it is happening. This doesn't seem to be the case with Canada though (I recently read about a court case won by an individual who wanted his "nonbinary bottom surgery" funded by the tax payer; I think it was on Reduxx). Due to the inconsistencies pointed out by Harrington, I think those "bioliberarian" pseudo-leftists naturally tend towards totalitarianism. For decades the strategy of the TRA orgs has been to covertly hijack instutitions and try to prevent the public finding out what's really happening. The same totalitarian responses could be found in the Covid response, especially with the "vaccines", where the NHS top bureaucrats (largely unchallenged) prioritised to transfer massive resources towards a dubious mass injection programme at the expense of other care. And the highly centralised and bureaucratised structure of the NHS, in addition to the fact that the NHS assumes quasi-religious status among large sections of the British Left and beyond, meant that this went largely unchallenged (doctors or nurses who spoke up would most likely lose their jobs). A privatised or semi-privatised health care system - which has other problems - may allow slightly more dissident voices than the NHS, though they have different means of sanctioning medical professionals.
A snapshot of the wealthier polities following perhaps an inflection point in the middle of an attempted global industrial roll-out? I have read Mary Harrington's competent account of the delivery of mostly similar levels of state medical services. She delivered much as one might expect when introducing an official study. But what to make of the choice of phrasing of this section near the end?
"... But you will have a much harder time persuading them to bankroll your every biomedical flight of fancy - especially if this week’s gender whimsy is competing for ward space with cancer patients."
This could seem an anecdotal caricature of what might be much wider health, including
mental health, issues located in a dislocated only too 'real' world? 'Cost benefit' itself is a widely applied analytical frame / 'rule of thumb', which together with its consequences, deserves some close attention, not least from philosophy?
"The Sexual Revolution has become the new founding story for many Western democracies, and thus the pantheon of old heroes is being cleared to make room for the icons of our new age"
I have been thinking about how Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and let's say, Sexual Supression (from the modern vantage point) all sort of depend on one another to function culturally. The impact of the Sexual Revolution leaves Christianity, Monogamy and Romance all in jeopardy, as mismatched pieces that don't function well in this cultural context.
I see this as related to the phenomenon notable in Orthodox parishes in America, where we are seeing so many young, currently unmarriagable men pouring in. These are men who might have a very different life in a world where Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and some degree of Sexual Supression were the cultural norm. But where are the women?
Women tend to be more pragmatic in their mate selction, and i don't think huge numbers of them are looking for men-or a church-offering asceticism and a counter-cultural way of life.
During the Easter holiday I went to visit my wife's family. Her brother is a pastor and told me about how the dynamic in many protestant churches is exactly the opposite. They are full of women, but there are few men. Theology aside, these churches offer a much better bargain. Comfort, entertainment, emotional highs.
I visited a local Orthodox parish on that Easter Sunday. There were 4 young men officially being brought into that parish as catechumens. I went to Easter service at my brother in law's church, and it was mostly females.
I'm not sure yet how all this relates, but I can see something happening here and I believe it's all related. Hopefully I can find some time to think it through further.
Very interesting. I am in England, I am a middle aged mum of still relatively young children. I sympathise with Orthodoxy and Catholicsm to some extent (even though I still know little about Orthodoxy). But I do sometimes take the kids to a modern mainstream Church of England church. The service doesn't really appeal to me (some of the music makes me cringe) but they are tolerant of unruly children (both mine have autism diagnoses) so it's a low barrier to attending. Protestant churches often have women in leadership now. Women can be clergy. I think one thing that would puts women off in Orthodoxy (and Catholicism) is that it is male dominated. But there may be other reasons why Orthodoxy in the US attracts young men. I read an article a while ago about Orthodox online influencer which sounded like right wing culture warriors, some parallels about attraction of some forms of Islam for young men and also incel culture. But this is just a superficial observation based on just some bits I've read on the internet, I am sure that there are many young men that are genuine in their quest of getting closer to Christ.
I would be very careful judging Orthodoxy by what you may see in some corners of the Internet. There are certainly people out there we might call the 'Orthodox Taliban' (as one priest I know referred to them) but I've never seen them in the churches. As with so many things, online content can completely twist your perspective.
Interestingly, Catholicism now, certainly in Ireland, is entirely female-dominated. Yes, the priests remain male, but almost everyone else in authority, and the great majority of the congregation, are women. They keep it going. Orthodoxy, in my experience, is very balanced in this respect. The priesthood remains male, according to Christian tradition, but the congregations tend to be very mixed. A great many families with children. In the end, I think the power of the service is what matters. I have found that Orthodoxy has guarded its tradition while the West has let it fall away.
I am glad that's the case. I am thinking of taking the kids to an Orthodox service some time. I have very limited experience of Orthodox services, one being an Easter one, but perhaps the fact that you stand and can enter and leave at different times (if I understand correctly) makes it easier for small children than traditional services in western Christianity? One of my children is severely autistic with severe learning disabilities. Ever since she was small I have intermittently reflected on children and spirituality/faith. As my daughter has such severely limited understanding of language, if I take her to a modern service she wouldn't even get any idea of that being any sort of spiritual/religious event but by taking her to a traditional church and traditional service at least she may get a glimpse. Tbh the main reason I've taken the kids to the local CoE modern church is because it's nearby and I can walk (I don't drive) and I know people there (I do value local community) and it's something to do on a Sunday in winter (and hopefully my other child will pick up a bit of Christian teaching even though he is mostly interested in the legos at church). I feel for me there is a cultural barrier in attending an Orthodox church. It's tricky to balance things with children sometimes. I want to raise the kids Christian but it's not obvious how to do this in today's culture especially when life is already difficult. I'd love to hear your perspective on bringing up kids some time. I agree with pretty much all of your political writings (or call it cultural criticism), a lot of what you've written is expressing what I've been feeling for a long time. I also relate to your conversion story as I had a strong conversion experience aged 28 as a student. My background is also in left wing politics and environmentalism. But while I find the wild saints etc interesting when I get the chance to read them - I do seek out God in nature (much more than in church), I find it harder to relate to this aspect of your writing as my life is so removed from desert father experience. Before I had kids I read some writings of some monks and could relate in some ways but my life is so busy now juggling so many things and getting little time to myself so my spirituality has to find different expressions.
I'd definitely recommend getting along to a service if you can. Talk to a priest if you can find the time and a sympathetic ear. Orthodox services are certainly very family-friendly, and as you say you can come and go as needed. They are also much longer than Western services, which can be tricky with young children. But in our church the young kids play together somewhere at the edge, whilst constantly being 'shushed' if they get too excited. It works fine. The Orthodox love families.
It is very had to raise children Christian - or even to properly be Christian - in this culture, that's for sure. I would find it very hard without a church community.
Unruly children are part of the Orthodox experience. People tend to be pretty tolerant. When I felt my kids were getting too noisy I would take them for a little stroll to the narthex or even out front of the building, the go back in.
And I should add, there are lots of young families coming into orthodoxy as a unit, but the singles are overwhelmingly male.
This quotation from G.K. Chesterton may not paint a true picture of all Orthodox Churches, but I offer it as being at least relevant to the discussion:
'If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and heaven will display far more variety than hell. "One fold" doesn't mean "one pool". Cultivated roses and daffodils are no more alike than wild roses and daffodils. What pleased me most about a Greek Orthodox mass I once attended was that there seemed to be no prescribed behaviour for the congregation. Some stood, some knelt, some sat, some walked; one crawled about the floor like a caterpillar. And the beauty of it was that nobody took the slightest notice of what anyone else was doing. I wish we Anglicans would follow their example. One meets people who are perturbed because someone in the next pew does, or does not, cross himself. They oughtn't even to have seen, let alone censured. "Who art thou that judgest Another's servant?" '
As far as "taking the kids to an Orthodox service," Pascha (Easter) is coming up in less than two weeks now, as I'm sure you know. The full blown midnight Pascha service is probably too much to aim for, but the Sunday afternoon Agape Vespers is a bright, brief, and thoroughly enchanting Easter service that your children might enjoy immensely. The Gospel reading (John 20:19-25) relates the first appearance of the risen Lord to the Apostles (sans Thomas), and, depending on the parish, is often read in at least a few different languages. I would affirm what Daniel Palmer and perhaps others have mentioned, that we Orthodox are usually pretty tolerant, if not downright happy to hear the "holy noise" of little ones during the services.
Re the NS Lyons review. Actually I think many things in the US (especially in the environmental world I inhabit) can be traced to resurgent Puritanism, not paganism. There was an excellent piece by a fellow named Michael Lind. The headlines are : Nothing Good Comes From New England- Puritan killjoys produced an elite culture of prissy snobbery and creepy fanaticism that thrives today in secularized form. The paper (really!) is called County Highway https://www.countyhighway.com. When I wrote them so that I could share this phenomenal piece without illegally copying it, they said they might offer links in May. We can hope…
We really have no way of knowing what a post-Christian paganism will look like. But since it will likely be rooted in the will to power it could very well manifest as puritanical. After all, someone once described Progressivism as "Puritanism without all the God stuff."
This is VERY true here in America. America is still deeply affected by Puritanism, many of the most wild and weird divergences from traditional Christianity can trace their lineages to Puritanism / fundamentalist Calvinism. It's one of those things that is so deeply embedded in our culture that we cannot easily see it until we've detached ourselves from that mainstream.
I'm Roman Catholic after coming from Protestantism and I find myself become more Catholic as I age. I guess the approach of the Grim Reaper sharpens the sense of need. The Catholic church is becoming more feminine in almost every way. In every organization there are at least two power structures: the apparent one laid out in the table of organization and the non apparent one. In the Church now the power, but not the authority, lies with the parish secretary, or the director of religious education or someone in a similar role, almost all of whom are women.
Religion is not alone.
I recently took a college class in listening and counselling. Out of 35 students three were men. As part of our class we had to make three videos of us acting as counselor and as a patient. When the instructor asked for comments I said we had lost an important learning tool. We never saw two men in that relationship and that men talking to men is very different than any other gender interaction. My point is that all the "helping professions" to borrow Christopher Lasch's phrase are female dominated and that includes churches.
Now I welcome female participation and frankly think many women would be far better priests than some of the male priests I have known. The risk we run is that in the rush to include women we risk of eliminating the male voice. Just as religion has been incomplete without women's voices it can only be complete if all voices are included.
Movements like feminism and the other isms always go to far to one side and in the process the middle is destroyed and animosity planted damaging the fabric of the institution. We see this is religion, education, psychology, sociology and the other soft sciences.
I find being able to watch the process develop fascinating but my own religious practice is becoming more inward focused, more directed to inward and constant prayer and less and less to organized expressions of belief. I could no more go to a mega non denominational church that I could to an antifa rally.
Male or female, religion is in the heart and the awakened heart yearns for God and His Peace.
One attraction for young, or not so young, men in the administrative district called "the united states" are the physical demands. Standing for services (the all-night vigil is definitely an endurance test, not to mention the cycles of Holy Week).Prayer, prostrations, silence, and all the other things captured under "ascetic labors" by the Fathers. Paul has written with his usual eloquence about the "green desert." Speaking personally, the idea of living in a hut on, say, Dartmoor, or along the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, and spending the days in prayer and contemplation is immensely attractive to me. I think that this element - the demanding physicality - is a major attraction. Plus, most Orthodox priests of my acquaintance are fairly big, burly guys. You definitely don't see that in mainline Protestantism.
(And note, my parish was written up in some dreadful local magazine as a hotbed of sympathy for Russia and the Confederacy. Can't speak for others, but I confess myself guilty of both charges, with a great deal of cheerfulness.
Part of my theory,: Orthodoxy is romantic. Women are pragmatic. Young man, near the peak of their romantic sensibility are the ones who seem to be pouring in.
There are also more opportunities for women in a culture where long term monogamous relationships have suffered a long term decline. In this situation women can still choose to have and bring up children as a single parent (as hard as this may be). This is much more rare for men for obvious reasons. So what are these men to do, as in spite of everything, social life from the thirties at the latest still revolves around children/the family. I can see why asceticism would appeal to those who have been left behind.
I follow N S Lyon, and read his piece in First Things (to which I subscribe), and in response I posted the following comment:
I wonder if you have read Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion) by: Steven D. Smith Smith’s book provides an interesting assessment of the ongoing competition between imminent paganism and transcendent religions (exemplified by Christianity) that seems quite relevant…
With respect to Mary Harrington, I also follow her. Her perspectives on issues of ‘gender’ are mostly sympathetic to my own. Another author with useful insights on this topic is Abigail Favale, whose book, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, I highly recommend.
When considering the mindset of those caught up in transgenderism, I think it useful to understand their perspective as being built on delusions of solipsistic narcissism.
A bit off topic, but today's Guardian has a piece by George Monbiot which talks about the draconian laws on right to protest, and mentions in passing 'the portcullis of power hasn't been lifted since Norman times', effectively agreeing with your contention that the first colony of Empire was England and it remains occupied.
On the other side the historian Jane Ohlyemer has a book just out called Making Empire
which says that Ireland was the UK's first colony and details the historic processes by which that happened, effectively arguing that Ireland was a petri dish for the rest of the Empire project, which of course got taken over by the Americans. But the MO, go into a culture, use religion, education, theft and lawfare to subjugate an entire society and steal their resources, got invented and refined in Ireland over 600 years. The Americans are still doing this in South America.
I think both are true, in so far as power in England has always been concentrated in the hands of a few, and any hint that it strays outside the accepted boundaries is met with a monstering in the press, Angela Rayner is obviously Not One of Us.....judging by her treatment in the right wing press. And the Post Office Enquiry is shining a light on how those at the top of companies really feel about their employees.....subbies with their hands in the tills..... So England is very definitely still occupied, even if the occupiers are now 'thugs in suits' rather than armour. And Ireland has her own 'thugs in suits'.....
I feel it's a bit like comparing the Mafia in Italy, with the Mafia in America, the first is obviously the original, but as it's native to the place, the techniques used for intimidation and control are tightly bound with the local culture, like a malignant offshoot of a plant . The other is an import, it has to try and compete with the local culture, suppress it, ridicule it, and make it feel inferior, it's more like an invasive weed. But conversely there's a better chance of getting rid of it because all of those things mean that the original culture is still there. And perhaps if people like John Moriarty become better known then there is still hope for Ireland. I hope this makes sense.....
Hm, well I'll listen to Monbiot complaining about the 'right to protest' when I hear him apologising for calling the Canadian truckers 'swastika-waving Nazis', or when I hear some self-reflection from him about calling for the jailing of those who protested about the covid regime. George has form on this; he essentially wants the right to protest only for people he agrees with.
But yes, regardless of my grumbles about him, we are all occupied. It's one reason I find wokeness so frustrating. It focuses on entirely the wrong target. But then maybe that's why it's so well-sponsored ...
I agree, poor George, I think his heart is still in the right(ish) place, but his brain has been hijacked. I think, he's trying to straddle the Adults in the Room demographic and the Just Stop Oil crowd, without realising that you can't, because there is no overlap.
And 'wokeness' is incredibly frustrating, because all the energy that could usefully be channelled into disrupting the status quo gets diverted into pointless performative noise but maybe, as you said, that's the point. It can also be used in my opinion to throw dust in the public eye, so that real issues get conflated with made up controversies so attention gets diluted to the point of disinterest.
I wonder also, if this isn't just another age old tactic of Empire. Take the most educated and clever of your subjects (like the Pharisees or young well educated university students), and con them into playing pointless competitive purity games against arbitary morality codes, thus defanging your most dangerous opposition. Give them enough to keep them quiet compared to the rest of the population whom you then brutally exploit. Crucify any trouble makers.....
Well, I have my own history with George (a former friend) so my bias is on the table. Still, I don't believe his heart is in the right place anymore. He is now aggressively pushing big tech solutions to the 'climate crisis', when he's not monstering farmers, demonising his former colleagues or defending Big Pharma. I think he has become everything he once stood against and he can't see it.
Rant over. Interesting point you make about the elites. It certainly always has been a tactic of empire to co-opt a society's elites at the first opportunity. That one seems to be working well again.
I follow Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, both evolutionary biologists, for their critical examination of what is being passed off as “the science”. Covid and gender dysphoria have been among their main topics. Bret also presents compelling discussions of what we are experiencing—a loss of sense making, a distrust in institutions we used to rely on for factual information, a crumbling of what used to be shared values, an insistence that we not believe there are objective truths. Why is this happening, he wonders. If information is power, then information must be made unreliable, even unavailable for some so others can be in control. So we were lied to about covid, scared with misinformation, even threatened. It was an experiment to see how compliant we could be made, and it worked. Even now we have to search for information about the so called vaccine’s adverse effects (it was really gene therapy, but “vaccine” is a much nicer word). Medical institutions deny there are adverse effects and continue to recommend boosting, even though there is plenty of information they are unsafe and should be abandoned. “Gender affirming care” is an abomination, a rebuke of common sense, yet it continues. Why? Are our brains being reprogrammed to accept nonsense? To genuflect to a new reality determined by—-who? And why? Power. Control. “We will own nothing and be happy.”
The only antidote I see to this insanity is trust in God.
It's tempting to dismiss David Shapiro without a second thought based upon his Star Trek tee-shirt alone. Stick around, however, and you realize this is in fact a rather intelligent guy, with a lot of interesting things to say (much -but not all- of which I disagree with). I do think he's a bit of a dick, in the same way I consider anyone a bit of a dick who waves away the encyclopedic catalog of obscene crimes against Palestinian women and children (and hospital staff, aid workers etc.) over the course of the past 6 months alone, but I'm trying to be better about not summarily dismissing people who have vastly different political opinions than mine.
One talk of his in particular I found interesting was this one, 'cognitive bias is keeping you angry and afraid'. May be interesting to those who can tolerate high nerdery:
Is "wav[ing] away the encyclopedic catalog of obscene crimes against Palestinian women and children (and hospital staff, aid workers etc.) over the course of the past 6 months alone" simply a political opinion? Is it a political opinion at all?
Well, no matter how odious or even psychopathic it appears to me to be, I do think it still qualifies as a political opinion. There are many people wandering around (in fact, I believe it is still a majority in the US) who hold the opinion that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the civilian deaths that resulted were completely justified despite much evidence to the contrary.
The horrifying fact is some people are utterly unmoved by being shown or told evidence of atrocities up to and including the mutilation and murder of children. They appear to have a (left-brained?), empathy-terminating view of things where some justification (perhaps "Hamas bad, it's their fault" or similar) is sufficient for them to close off an emotional response to any subsequent level of human torment. Also, there's an echo chamber element to this as well, where people have curated their media and social environments such they haven't actually seen (m)any photos or videos of atrocities brandished by "the other side".
I can't actually relate to this (lack of) response. I had to stop engaging with what was happening in Gaza after about 6 weeks because it was just more and worse of the same I'd witnessed for decades during every Israeli "mowing of the lawn". It was cratering my mental health and I'm old and semi-wise enough to know when to retreat.
My best guess is some perceive the suffering of members of out-groups as essentially incomprehensible abstractions, or perhaps deserved punishment, even when it's infants or toddlers being maimed and killed. There is also the idea that people who themselves have never suffered anything worse than a skinned knee simply cannot comprehend at all what having your arm blown off while watching your family torn apart by a 2,000 pound bomb can possibly mean, so it has no impact on them emotionally.
In the case of someone like Shapiro, I mean, watch the video. It's basically an intellectual justification for not giving a damn what happens in some conflict far away. And that is also a possibility: "intelligent" people often seem to allow their sense of empathy to wither away in favor of a comforting set of dry, intellectual abstractions. Again: empathy-terminating thoughts.
Thank you for your reply. I share you sentiments and your reactions.
I think another way of expressing my point is that there is a difference between being indifferent to suffering ("waving it away") and endorsing it, a difference between saying "I don't care" and saying "I support/oppose it."
Well, by "waving it away" I meant people who -when confronted by evidence of atrocities most find somewhere between offensive and unbearable- dismiss such atrocities as justifiable/excusable. That to me represents at the very least tacit support for such atrocities. So it's almost never genuine indifference, with the possible exception of sociopaths who are constitutionally incapable of empathy.
Everyone who believes the nuclear attack on Hiroshima was justified, for example, would ideally be compelled to explain why to some blinded and burned Japanese child who has their intestines spilling out in the aftermath near ground zero. Harry Truman should probably go first, as there would be a very long line waiting to hear from him.
I’ve been reading Dante during Lent, amongst a few other things. This is the first time I’ve read it since all of the re-enchantment stuff has been popularized across the internet and podcast world, as well as myself becoming Orthodox. This time I’m trying to read it with new eyes in light of all that instead of the way universities beat reading into me. It works at times, and not so much at other times. Practice, practice, practice.
Our host mentioned the prayer of St Isaac the Syrian as something read by the Orthodox during Lent. Please let me share a few other titles that I have found amazingly edifying:
St John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent: one of the classics, and is helped by the gentle, good-humored spirit of the author (in contrast to the severity of St John Chrysostom).
The Optina Elders, Live Without Hypocrisy: a digest of the sayings and counsels of the elders of Optina Monastery (Russia, 19th century). Probably the since best spiritual book I have ever read. St Ambrose of Optina was the model for Dostoevsky's Zossima. Their counsels, based on the ontology/anthropology of the Eastern Fathers and the Hesychast tradition brought to Russia by St Paisius Velichkovsky, are incredible in their love, beauty and simplicity (and a good measure, IMHO, of the degree to which protestantism has been throughly "americanized." which is to say turned into the handmaid of Satan.
The St Herman of Alaska folks (this is the monastery founded by Fr Serpahin Rose) has put out seven volumes of the Optina Elders' teachings. Available on Amazon, and highly recommended. Also, a group called All Saints Press has put out the "Chronicles of Seraphim-Divyevo Monastery," a beautiful edition of the Russian life of the saint.
Why the Russians? Because one can argue successfully that both protestantism and latin Christianity have surrendered to "modernity"/Americanism and replaced whatever they may have taught with the radical egalitarianism and sexual obsession that is the american stock in trade.
The Russian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, withstood the most brutal persecution that the Church has ever experienced in its history, and it did not bow or break. Your mileage may vary, but to me that represents a certain "judgment of history" on American protestantism, and protestantism in general, and Russia, with Russian Orthodoxy.
Love the Optina Elders book series. For me their guidance for lay people still seem really relevant. There’s a school of thought that the flowering of Orthodoxy in 19 century Russia (Optina, St John of Kronstadt, St Ignatius Brianchaninov, St Theophan) was to strengthen the faithful for what was to come.
I'm afraid that your references to American Protestantism resonate with my spirit. Of course, difficult to make broad generalizations, but we have sown the church-growth movement seeds and are now reaping the whirlwind of being conformed to the pattern of this world. As written elsewhere,
'“Come visit us, we won’t bite.” or “Hey, we’ll make you feel right at home with our coffee klatches before service.” or “Small groups. Small groups. Small groups.” or “We’ll make you feel so comfortable, our stage will look like a rock concert.”
“And pews?”
“Nah, they’re gone, we have comfy chairs now, come on, in!”
“And pulpits?”
“So yesterday! No, we have a guy wandering around and being very entertaining. And besides, he doesn’t need a place to put his Bible, because the words you are supposed to read are already on the screen. Same with the hymnals – they’re gone to – don’t need ‘em. Aren’t electronics wonderful!”
“And the sermons, are they derived from wrestling with the Scriptures?”
“No, they’re online, and come with screen-ready graphics. Easy peasy"'
But perhaps you refer to a deeper problem with the American Church?
I mentioned the other week that I'd just completed a book that focused on the early Irish monastic movement’s strategy of building “monastic towns,” that helped urbanize a rural Ireland, and re-civilize and evangelize a Western Europe that was devolving into barbarism (while in the process providing an introduction to Architecture, Urban Planning, and real estate development and why these are important for the Church). Basically a strategy for the Church in dark times centered around the built environment. Well it's now available on my website at: www.ward-davis.com
Interesting links as usual, I'm looking forward to the N.S. Lyons article.
Louise Perry had a fascinating conversation with Robin Hanson a few weeks ago. Hanson is a futurist who came on to discuss, in mournful tones... the decline of Machine modernity and the rise of a lower-tech, more religious future, due to demographic trends -- primarily, the urban monoculture's plummeting birth rates. It was an odd experience to follow along with the argument but have a completely different emotional response to it, but it was perhaps more interesting that the conversation happened at all. It seems like podcast hosts have a lot of incentive to invite on ideological friendlies, but here was a techno-futurist discussing trends with conservative-leaning Louise Perry, the common interest being birth rate trends, but the participants approaching the subject from fairly different angles. Curious if anyone else listened to it and had a similar reaction!
Not to sound too cheery about collapsing birth rates. Hanson actually made it sound like we could have a soft landing into a lower-tech, less globalized future, but it could be much more apocalyptic.
Really interesting… I haven’t yet seen the video but have watched others on the theme of declining population. I find it interesting that it’s only now, in the past couple of years, that this theme has really received prominence when demographers and policymakers must have known about it for many years. Not sure why.
I’m definitely not an expert (as you’ll see!) but I doubt it would be a soft landing: there are just too many delicately-balanced and interlinked moving parts in our modern technocracy, and it’s fuelled by old-fashioned sentiment and herd instinct… so things could collapse very quickly. And if those who run the modern world have extracted what they want and no longer have an interest in managing it, or in managing a smooth decline, chaos will be inevitable for a while until we re-form into communities and gradually find a new and very different localist balance. Who knows, this might be wrong - but the extent to which ‘they’ have used chaos, confusion and disruption so far to usher in their degrading societal transformations suggests it might not be.
>I find it interesting that it’s only now, in the past couple of years, that this theme has really received prominence when demographers and policymakers must have known about it for many years.
My guess is willful blindness to things like this until it's impossible, and the last few years have made blindness to many things impossible.
Perry's site tells us that the interview is with Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute. Two observations (before I listen to the interview):
The Guardian this morning tells us the Future of Humanity Institute has closed down. It was funded by the now disgraced financier, Sam Bankman-Fried. Its philosophers, some of whom were friends of B-F, are concerned to promote 'effective altruism', which appears to involve encouraging the very wealthy to give away substantial parts of their fortune in order to promote planetary wellbeing. A Time magazine article, reachable from the Guardian article, suggests that monitoring and surveillance of individual behaviour are an element of the 'effective atruism' scheme. It sounds reminiscent of the schemes of Mr. Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
Economists at George Mason, generously funded by powerful business interests, have traditionally been associated with the Hayekian vision of free markets and laissez-faire, with much emphasis on individual liberty. How this can be made congruent with technology-led surveillance schemes is puzzling. Perhaps the Perry interview will clarify things.
Zuboff's book on surveillance capitalism came out in late 2018 (a must-read imo) and I have yet to see anyone on the economic Right take on its arguments. My suspicion would be that what would happen is the usual compartmentalization: nothing wrong with capitalism is ever a feature. It's always a bug. It's like the arguments about "woke capital" and "crony capitalism" -- the problem's always with the adjective, never the noun.
I'm somewhat familiar with effective altruism, and a large contingent of it is libertarian, so I would expect the contingent within EA supporting surveillance of individual behavior would be a minority. However a lot of effective altruists are also rationalist utilitarians, who are liable to adopt unintuitive beliefs due to complex thought experiments, so a lot of them could believe it's bad on one level but still support it.
I find it very interesting that both Yanis Varoufakis (left) and Joel Kotkin (right) have written books warning about the coming "techno-feudalism." I am reading the former now, and plan to read the latter next.
Varoufakis is one of the few thoroughly decent non-corrupted intellectuals on the Left. I don't agree with everything he writes but he has always been interesting.
Blessed Spring/Lent/Eastertide, friends. Please forgive me if I have missed previous discussion on this book, but I have just finished reading David James Duncan’s 2023 novel Sun House and want to recommend it to you all. It is a story that I hope will continue to work its good magic in me long after the first reading, and one that I intend to re-engage periodically in the hopes of picking up the many threads I wasn’t yet ready to see or hold the first time(s) through. Sun House is an obvious and immediate addition to my Library for the End of a World.
Yes! I too am grateful for this bibliography especially...depths upon depths here. I gave my husband The Ascetic Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian for his birthday last year (we know how to party)-- that should cover 538 days of serious reading, at the recommended pace of one page per day!
Nice! How has the reading been? That was one of the first books that I looked up, but was a bit daunted by the price as well as the length/depth. Would you say it's worth getting that volume rather than a shorter book of excerpts? I decided to start instead with Simone Weil, which has been wonderful. And then of course, I will have to delve into the Beguines. . .
I haven't read it (yet)! But-- I asked my husband and he said that since it's really geared toward monastics, he thinks a book of excerpts would be sufficient for a layperson. (And yes, most definitely spendy, but it is really quite beautiful and well bound.)
A question for my fellow Abbey readers who are Orthodox: I’ve been going to liturgies on Sundays for about a year now, and I’d like to go to a vespers service on Saturday night. Anything I should know about what to expect? How much different from a Sunday morning is it?
I’ve been going to an OCA church here in the U.S., for some context. Thanks!
My small parish is also OCA, in the midwest, and our Saturday Vespers is usually a smaller group than Sunday morning, and the service is shorter-- around 45 minutes. There is no Eucharist, no homily, and it definitely has an evening/end of the day feel to it.
Recently read Graham Pardun’s essay “Waving Farewell to Byzantium” on his Substack, Sabbath Empire. As someone who is Orthodox Curious but put off by the ultra factionalism it was just the piece I needed.
A bit marginal, perhaps, but I've found myself unexpectedly *obsessed* by the journalist James Delingpole's podcast The Delingpod.
It's odd, and it won't be to everyone's taste here. But it's fascinating, and I hope you give him a try. James is a former mainstream journalist, right of centre, who wrote somewhat lightweight pieces for several big papers - so, a named columnist with a lot to lose.
But during the pandemic he smelled a big rat, went massively "off-message", found Jesus, and is now fighting what he sees (as many here do, too) as the coming totalitarian night. His journey has been rapid, radical and very destabilising to his own life - but inspiring, too. Some of his views are frankly odd, but others are growing on me fast, and some of his guests are extraordinary. I've been struck in particular by Simon Elmer, Miri AF, Scrumpmonkey, Brian Gerrish, John Waters, but so many others, too. His sessions with his brother Dick are utterly lovely - daft, divagatory, teasing - and they model (for me) what a brotherly relationship could be.
Who knew... that a right-wing gadfly with (ordinarily) an assured mainstream career could find a depth of integrity and grow up into one of the most courageous, fearless and open-minded voices of our dark times. As if PG Wodehouse woke up one morning to find himself morphed not into a beetle but into George Orwell.
Totally agree. His journey has been amazing to witness.
You all have introduced me to him. Is that journey anywhere condensed, or only referenced by him over time? Thanks!
Good question and I’m afraid I don’t know the answer, sorry. He’s on substack if that’s any help.
I’ve picked up his journey from listening to his podcasts, where he’ll give details of his journey from time to time. He really has given up a lot, burned many bridges: he knew Johnson, Cameron, Gove et al as actual friends at Oxford and beyond, and would have had a comfortable career for the rest of his life had he wanted it. In his mid-50s - tricky time - he threw it away because of what he saw as the obvious lies of governments over Covid to dive into a real search for the truth about what is happening in our world, who is pushing it all forward and why, and this has taken him down most of what he calls the “rabbit holes.”
It’s not really for me to advocate for him like some fanboy, but catching up with 100+ of his podcasts has certainly changed me, and introduced me to some very compelling and authentic new voices and new ideas I’d possibly not have met at all, and not in such a short space. His manner might be a bit fey for some people’s taste - private school and Christ Church don’t just vanish from the nervous system - but he’s honest and sincere, and not a shill for anyone. (I hope…!)
Amazing - thanks for the heads up. I knew Delingpole very slightly 10 or so years ago, when he was still banging about the neocon/american "conservative" crowd (the Republican Party calls itself conservative, but it isn't and it never has been. There is not a "conservative party" in the "united states."
You’re welcome. Yep, for sure, he’s seen through it all now. A very different man now.
I used to enjoy listening to him about a decade ago, but gradually tuned out when the Right (of which I'm still somewhat a part, albeit a disaffected one) went bonkers. He was always at his best when he was NOT talking politics. I'm now quite curious where he's at.
He’s completely different…. Basically, he’s into what used to be called conspiracy theories, but which now seem to be emerging as conspiracy facts. Even if you think that worldview is off the rails, his guests are well worth listening to.
Jules, thanks for the tip on Delingpole. See my separate comment posted this evening about Max Azzarello as a sign for our times. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.
Thanks, I’ll look
Mary Harrington makes a clever and mostly convincing argument regarding the impossibility of reconciling what she calls bio-liberterianism with socialised health care. In a situation where resources are limited there will not a possibility of unlimited "gender" interventions because resources will be prioritised otherwise if the public have a say. Generally I think this is true, however, there is also the possibility of health care systems getting hijacked, and this has certainly happened. In countries with nationalised health care, such as Sweden (which was at the forefront of "gender" medical intervention for young people for a while) and Britain, there is now luckily a backtracking as the wider public becomes aware of what it is happening. This doesn't seem to be the case with Canada though (I recently read about a court case won by an individual who wanted his "nonbinary bottom surgery" funded by the tax payer; I think it was on Reduxx). Due to the inconsistencies pointed out by Harrington, I think those "bioliberarian" pseudo-leftists naturally tend towards totalitarianism. For decades the strategy of the TRA orgs has been to covertly hijack instutitions and try to prevent the public finding out what's really happening. The same totalitarian responses could be found in the Covid response, especially with the "vaccines", where the NHS top bureaucrats (largely unchallenged) prioritised to transfer massive resources towards a dubious mass injection programme at the expense of other care. And the highly centralised and bureaucratised structure of the NHS, in addition to the fact that the NHS assumes quasi-religious status among large sections of the British Left and beyond, meant that this went largely unchallenged (doctors or nurses who spoke up would most likely lose their jobs). A privatised or semi-privatised health care system - which has other problems - may allow slightly more dissident voices than the NHS, though they have different means of sanctioning medical professionals.
A snapshot of the wealthier polities following perhaps an inflection point in the middle of an attempted global industrial roll-out? I have read Mary Harrington's competent account of the delivery of mostly similar levels of state medical services. She delivered much as one might expect when introducing an official study. But what to make of the choice of phrasing of this section near the end?
"... But you will have a much harder time persuading them to bankroll your every biomedical flight of fancy - especially if this week’s gender whimsy is competing for ward space with cancer patients."
This could seem an anecdotal caricature of what might be much wider health, including
mental health, issues located in a dislocated only too 'real' world? 'Cost benefit' itself is a widely applied analytical frame / 'rule of thumb', which together with its consequences, deserves some close attention, not least from philosophy?
"The Sexual Revolution has become the new founding story for many Western democracies, and thus the pantheon of old heroes is being cleared to make room for the icons of our new age"
I have been thinking about how Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and let's say, Sexual Supression (from the modern vantage point) all sort of depend on one another to function culturally. The impact of the Sexual Revolution leaves Christianity, Monogamy and Romance all in jeopardy, as mismatched pieces that don't function well in this cultural context.
I see this as related to the phenomenon notable in Orthodox parishes in America, where we are seeing so many young, currently unmarriagable men pouring in. These are men who might have a very different life in a world where Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and some degree of Sexual Supression were the cultural norm. But where are the women?
Women tend to be more pragmatic in their mate selction, and i don't think huge numbers of them are looking for men-or a church-offering asceticism and a counter-cultural way of life.
During the Easter holiday I went to visit my wife's family. Her brother is a pastor and told me about how the dynamic in many protestant churches is exactly the opposite. They are full of women, but there are few men. Theology aside, these churches offer a much better bargain. Comfort, entertainment, emotional highs.
I visited a local Orthodox parish on that Easter Sunday. There were 4 young men officially being brought into that parish as catechumens. I went to Easter service at my brother in law's church, and it was mostly females.
I'm not sure yet how all this relates, but I can see something happening here and I believe it's all related. Hopefully I can find some time to think it through further.
Very interesting. I am in England, I am a middle aged mum of still relatively young children. I sympathise with Orthodoxy and Catholicsm to some extent (even though I still know little about Orthodoxy). But I do sometimes take the kids to a modern mainstream Church of England church. The service doesn't really appeal to me (some of the music makes me cringe) but they are tolerant of unruly children (both mine have autism diagnoses) so it's a low barrier to attending. Protestant churches often have women in leadership now. Women can be clergy. I think one thing that would puts women off in Orthodoxy (and Catholicism) is that it is male dominated. But there may be other reasons why Orthodoxy in the US attracts young men. I read an article a while ago about Orthodox online influencer which sounded like right wing culture warriors, some parallels about attraction of some forms of Islam for young men and also incel culture. But this is just a superficial observation based on just some bits I've read on the internet, I am sure that there are many young men that are genuine in their quest of getting closer to Christ.
I would be very careful judging Orthodoxy by what you may see in some corners of the Internet. There are certainly people out there we might call the 'Orthodox Taliban' (as one priest I know referred to them) but I've never seen them in the churches. As with so many things, online content can completely twist your perspective.
Interestingly, Catholicism now, certainly in Ireland, is entirely female-dominated. Yes, the priests remain male, but almost everyone else in authority, and the great majority of the congregation, are women. They keep it going. Orthodoxy, in my experience, is very balanced in this respect. The priesthood remains male, according to Christian tradition, but the congregations tend to be very mixed. A great many families with children. In the end, I think the power of the service is what matters. I have found that Orthodoxy has guarded its tradition while the West has let it fall away.
I am glad that's the case. I am thinking of taking the kids to an Orthodox service some time. I have very limited experience of Orthodox services, one being an Easter one, but perhaps the fact that you stand and can enter and leave at different times (if I understand correctly) makes it easier for small children than traditional services in western Christianity? One of my children is severely autistic with severe learning disabilities. Ever since she was small I have intermittently reflected on children and spirituality/faith. As my daughter has such severely limited understanding of language, if I take her to a modern service she wouldn't even get any idea of that being any sort of spiritual/religious event but by taking her to a traditional church and traditional service at least she may get a glimpse. Tbh the main reason I've taken the kids to the local CoE modern church is because it's nearby and I can walk (I don't drive) and I know people there (I do value local community) and it's something to do on a Sunday in winter (and hopefully my other child will pick up a bit of Christian teaching even though he is mostly interested in the legos at church). I feel for me there is a cultural barrier in attending an Orthodox church. It's tricky to balance things with children sometimes. I want to raise the kids Christian but it's not obvious how to do this in today's culture especially when life is already difficult. I'd love to hear your perspective on bringing up kids some time. I agree with pretty much all of your political writings (or call it cultural criticism), a lot of what you've written is expressing what I've been feeling for a long time. I also relate to your conversion story as I had a strong conversion experience aged 28 as a student. My background is also in left wing politics and environmentalism. But while I find the wild saints etc interesting when I get the chance to read them - I do seek out God in nature (much more than in church), I find it harder to relate to this aspect of your writing as my life is so removed from desert father experience. Before I had kids I read some writings of some monks and could relate in some ways but my life is so busy now juggling so many things and getting little time to myself so my spirituality has to find different expressions.
I'd definitely recommend getting along to a service if you can. Talk to a priest if you can find the time and a sympathetic ear. Orthodox services are certainly very family-friendly, and as you say you can come and go as needed. They are also much longer than Western services, which can be tricky with young children. But in our church the young kids play together somewhere at the edge, whilst constantly being 'shushed' if they get too excited. It works fine. The Orthodox love families.
It is very had to raise children Christian - or even to properly be Christian - in this culture, that's for sure. I would find it very hard without a church community.
Unruly children are part of the Orthodox experience. People tend to be pretty tolerant. When I felt my kids were getting too noisy I would take them for a little stroll to the narthex or even out front of the building, the go back in.
And I should add, there are lots of young families coming into orthodoxy as a unit, but the singles are overwhelmingly male.
This quotation from G.K. Chesterton may not paint a true picture of all Orthodox Churches, but I offer it as being at least relevant to the discussion:
'If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and heaven will display far more variety than hell. "One fold" doesn't mean "one pool". Cultivated roses and daffodils are no more alike than wild roses and daffodils. What pleased me most about a Greek Orthodox mass I once attended was that there seemed to be no prescribed behaviour for the congregation. Some stood, some knelt, some sat, some walked; one crawled about the floor like a caterpillar. And the beauty of it was that nobody took the slightest notice of what anyone else was doing. I wish we Anglicans would follow their example. One meets people who are perturbed because someone in the next pew does, or does not, cross himself. They oughtn't even to have seen, let alone censured. "Who art thou that judgest Another's servant?" '
Letters to Malcolm, Letter 2, at https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-letterstomalcolm/lewiscs-letterstomalcolm-00-h.html
I should note that I had mistakenly attributed to Chesterton was actually written by C.S. Lewis.
As far as "taking the kids to an Orthodox service," Pascha (Easter) is coming up in less than two weeks now, as I'm sure you know. The full blown midnight Pascha service is probably too much to aim for, but the Sunday afternoon Agape Vespers is a bright, brief, and thoroughly enchanting Easter service that your children might enjoy immensely. The Gospel reading (John 20:19-25) relates the first appearance of the risen Lord to the Apostles (sans Thomas), and, depending on the parish, is often read in at least a few different languages. I would affirm what Daniel Palmer and perhaps others have mentioned, that we Orthodox are usually pretty tolerant, if not downright happy to hear the "holy noise" of little ones during the services.
The church is female.
The priest is male.
This is important.
Maintaining those two things might be unique to Orthodoxy in the Christian world.
Re the NS Lyons review. Actually I think many things in the US (especially in the environmental world I inhabit) can be traced to resurgent Puritanism, not paganism. There was an excellent piece by a fellow named Michael Lind. The headlines are : Nothing Good Comes From New England- Puritan killjoys produced an elite culture of prissy snobbery and creepy fanaticism that thrives today in secularized form. The paper (really!) is called County Highway https://www.countyhighway.com. When I wrote them so that I could share this phenomenal piece without illegally copying it, they said they might offer links in May. We can hope…
We really have no way of knowing what a post-Christian paganism will look like. But since it will likely be rooted in the will to power it could very well manifest as puritanical. After all, someone once described Progressivism as "Puritanism without all the God stuff."
This is VERY true here in America. America is still deeply affected by Puritanism, many of the most wild and weird divergences from traditional Christianity can trace their lineages to Puritanism / fundamentalist Calvinism. It's one of those things that is so deeply embedded in our culture that we cannot easily see it until we've detached ourselves from that mainstream.
I'm Roman Catholic after coming from Protestantism and I find myself become more Catholic as I age. I guess the approach of the Grim Reaper sharpens the sense of need. The Catholic church is becoming more feminine in almost every way. In every organization there are at least two power structures: the apparent one laid out in the table of organization and the non apparent one. In the Church now the power, but not the authority, lies with the parish secretary, or the director of religious education or someone in a similar role, almost all of whom are women.
Religion is not alone.
I recently took a college class in listening and counselling. Out of 35 students three were men. As part of our class we had to make three videos of us acting as counselor and as a patient. When the instructor asked for comments I said we had lost an important learning tool. We never saw two men in that relationship and that men talking to men is very different than any other gender interaction. My point is that all the "helping professions" to borrow Christopher Lasch's phrase are female dominated and that includes churches.
Now I welcome female participation and frankly think many women would be far better priests than some of the male priests I have known. The risk we run is that in the rush to include women we risk of eliminating the male voice. Just as religion has been incomplete without women's voices it can only be complete if all voices are included.
Movements like feminism and the other isms always go to far to one side and in the process the middle is destroyed and animosity planted damaging the fabric of the institution. We see this is religion, education, psychology, sociology and the other soft sciences.
I find being able to watch the process develop fascinating but my own religious practice is becoming more inward focused, more directed to inward and constant prayer and less and less to organized expressions of belief. I could no more go to a mega non denominational church that I could to an antifa rally.
Male or female, religion is in the heart and the awakened heart yearns for God and His Peace.
One attraction for young, or not so young, men in the administrative district called "the united states" are the physical demands. Standing for services (the all-night vigil is definitely an endurance test, not to mention the cycles of Holy Week).Prayer, prostrations, silence, and all the other things captured under "ascetic labors" by the Fathers. Paul has written with his usual eloquence about the "green desert." Speaking personally, the idea of living in a hut on, say, Dartmoor, or along the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, and spending the days in prayer and contemplation is immensely attractive to me. I think that this element - the demanding physicality - is a major attraction. Plus, most Orthodox priests of my acquaintance are fairly big, burly guys. You definitely don't see that in mainline Protestantism.
(And note, my parish was written up in some dreadful local magazine as a hotbed of sympathy for Russia and the Confederacy. Can't speak for others, but I confess myself guilty of both charges, with a great deal of cheerfulness.
For some reason, this idea of living out in a hut somewhere on your own has always been more appealing to men then to women.
Good point. There are female hermits but not many.
This has been my experience too. Where are the young women? Not in my parish - in UK. A few older recovering feminists though so maybe there’s hope?
Part of my theory,: Orthodoxy is romantic. Women are pragmatic. Young man, near the peak of their romantic sensibility are the ones who seem to be pouring in.
That’s an interesting take. There’s definitely something in that.
Great observation. Romantic and heroic. Which are impermissible these days.
Old recoverning feminists? That's interesting too.
There are also more opportunities for women in a culture where long term monogamous relationships have suffered a long term decline. In this situation women can still choose to have and bring up children as a single parent (as hard as this may be). This is much more rare for men for obvious reasons. So what are these men to do, as in spite of everything, social life from the thirties at the latest still revolves around children/the family. I can see why asceticism would appeal to those who have been left behind.
I follow N S Lyon, and read his piece in First Things (to which I subscribe), and in response I posted the following comment:
I wonder if you have read Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion) by: Steven D. Smith Smith’s book provides an interesting assessment of the ongoing competition between imminent paganism and transcendent religions (exemplified by Christianity) that seems quite relevant…
With respect to Mary Harrington, I also follow her. Her perspectives on issues of ‘gender’ are mostly sympathetic to my own. Another author with useful insights on this topic is Abigail Favale, whose book, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, I highly recommend.
https://mcgrath.nd.edu/about/faculty-staff/abigail-favale-ph-d/
When considering the mindset of those caught up in transgenderism, I think it useful to understand their perspective as being built on delusions of solipsistic narcissism.
A bit off topic, but today's Guardian has a piece by George Monbiot which talks about the draconian laws on right to protest, and mentions in passing 'the portcullis of power hasn't been lifted since Norman times', effectively agreeing with your contention that the first colony of Empire was England and it remains occupied.
On the other side the historian Jane Ohlyemer has a book just out called Making Empire
which says that Ireland was the UK's first colony and details the historic processes by which that happened, effectively arguing that Ireland was a petri dish for the rest of the Empire project, which of course got taken over by the Americans. But the MO, go into a culture, use religion, education, theft and lawfare to subjugate an entire society and steal their resources, got invented and refined in Ireland over 600 years. The Americans are still doing this in South America.
I think both are true, in so far as power in England has always been concentrated in the hands of a few, and any hint that it strays outside the accepted boundaries is met with a monstering in the press, Angela Rayner is obviously Not One of Us.....judging by her treatment in the right wing press. And the Post Office Enquiry is shining a light on how those at the top of companies really feel about their employees.....subbies with their hands in the tills..... So England is very definitely still occupied, even if the occupiers are now 'thugs in suits' rather than armour. And Ireland has her own 'thugs in suits'.....
I feel it's a bit like comparing the Mafia in Italy, with the Mafia in America, the first is obviously the original, but as it's native to the place, the techniques used for intimidation and control are tightly bound with the local culture, like a malignant offshoot of a plant . The other is an import, it has to try and compete with the local culture, suppress it, ridicule it, and make it feel inferior, it's more like an invasive weed. But conversely there's a better chance of getting rid of it because all of those things mean that the original culture is still there. And perhaps if people like John Moriarty become better known then there is still hope for Ireland. I hope this makes sense.....
Hm, well I'll listen to Monbiot complaining about the 'right to protest' when I hear him apologising for calling the Canadian truckers 'swastika-waving Nazis', or when I hear some self-reflection from him about calling for the jailing of those who protested about the covid regime. George has form on this; he essentially wants the right to protest only for people he agrees with.
But yes, regardless of my grumbles about him, we are all occupied. It's one reason I find wokeness so frustrating. It focuses on entirely the wrong target. But then maybe that's why it's so well-sponsored ...
I agree, poor George, I think his heart is still in the right(ish) place, but his brain has been hijacked. I think, he's trying to straddle the Adults in the Room demographic and the Just Stop Oil crowd, without realising that you can't, because there is no overlap.
And 'wokeness' is incredibly frustrating, because all the energy that could usefully be channelled into disrupting the status quo gets diverted into pointless performative noise but maybe, as you said, that's the point. It can also be used in my opinion to throw dust in the public eye, so that real issues get conflated with made up controversies so attention gets diluted to the point of disinterest.
I wonder also, if this isn't just another age old tactic of Empire. Take the most educated and clever of your subjects (like the Pharisees or young well educated university students), and con them into playing pointless competitive purity games against arbitary morality codes, thus defanging your most dangerous opposition. Give them enough to keep them quiet compared to the rest of the population whom you then brutally exploit. Crucify any trouble makers.....
Well, I have my own history with George (a former friend) so my bias is on the table. Still, I don't believe his heart is in the right place anymore. He is now aggressively pushing big tech solutions to the 'climate crisis', when he's not monstering farmers, demonising his former colleagues or defending Big Pharma. I think he has become everything he once stood against and he can't see it.
Rant over. Interesting point you make about the elites. It certainly always has been a tactic of empire to co-opt a society's elites at the first opportunity. That one seems to be working well again.
I follow Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, both evolutionary biologists, for their critical examination of what is being passed off as “the science”. Covid and gender dysphoria have been among their main topics. Bret also presents compelling discussions of what we are experiencing—a loss of sense making, a distrust in institutions we used to rely on for factual information, a crumbling of what used to be shared values, an insistence that we not believe there are objective truths. Why is this happening, he wonders. If information is power, then information must be made unreliable, even unavailable for some so others can be in control. So we were lied to about covid, scared with misinformation, even threatened. It was an experiment to see how compliant we could be made, and it worked. Even now we have to search for information about the so called vaccine’s adverse effects (it was really gene therapy, but “vaccine” is a much nicer word). Medical institutions deny there are adverse effects and continue to recommend boosting, even though there is plenty of information they are unsafe and should be abandoned. “Gender affirming care” is an abomination, a rebuke of common sense, yet it continues. Why? Are our brains being reprogrammed to accept nonsense? To genuflect to a new reality determined by—-who? And why? Power. Control. “We will own nothing and be happy.”
The only antidote I see to this insanity is trust in God.
It's tempting to dismiss David Shapiro without a second thought based upon his Star Trek tee-shirt alone. Stick around, however, and you realize this is in fact a rather intelligent guy, with a lot of interesting things to say (much -but not all- of which I disagree with). I do think he's a bit of a dick, in the same way I consider anyone a bit of a dick who waves away the encyclopedic catalog of obscene crimes against Palestinian women and children (and hospital staff, aid workers etc.) over the course of the past 6 months alone, but I'm trying to be better about not summarily dismissing people who have vastly different political opinions than mine.
One talk of his in particular I found interesting was this one, 'cognitive bias is keeping you angry and afraid'. May be interesting to those who can tolerate high nerdery:
https://youtu.be/RAnGfkbD378
Is "wav[ing] away the encyclopedic catalog of obscene crimes against Palestinian women and children (and hospital staff, aid workers etc.) over the course of the past 6 months alone" simply a political opinion? Is it a political opinion at all?
Well, no matter how odious or even psychopathic it appears to me to be, I do think it still qualifies as a political opinion. There are many people wandering around (in fact, I believe it is still a majority in the US) who hold the opinion that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the civilian deaths that resulted were completely justified despite much evidence to the contrary.
The horrifying fact is some people are utterly unmoved by being shown or told evidence of atrocities up to and including the mutilation and murder of children. They appear to have a (left-brained?), empathy-terminating view of things where some justification (perhaps "Hamas bad, it's their fault" or similar) is sufficient for them to close off an emotional response to any subsequent level of human torment. Also, there's an echo chamber element to this as well, where people have curated their media and social environments such they haven't actually seen (m)any photos or videos of atrocities brandished by "the other side".
I can't actually relate to this (lack of) response. I had to stop engaging with what was happening in Gaza after about 6 weeks because it was just more and worse of the same I'd witnessed for decades during every Israeli "mowing of the lawn". It was cratering my mental health and I'm old and semi-wise enough to know when to retreat.
My best guess is some perceive the suffering of members of out-groups as essentially incomprehensible abstractions, or perhaps deserved punishment, even when it's infants or toddlers being maimed and killed. There is also the idea that people who themselves have never suffered anything worse than a skinned knee simply cannot comprehend at all what having your arm blown off while watching your family torn apart by a 2,000 pound bomb can possibly mean, so it has no impact on them emotionally.
In the case of someone like Shapiro, I mean, watch the video. It's basically an intellectual justification for not giving a damn what happens in some conflict far away. And that is also a possibility: "intelligent" people often seem to allow their sense of empathy to wither away in favor of a comforting set of dry, intellectual abstractions. Again: empathy-terminating thoughts.
Thank you for your reply. I share you sentiments and your reactions.
I think another way of expressing my point is that there is a difference between being indifferent to suffering ("waving it away") and endorsing it, a difference between saying "I don't care" and saying "I support/oppose it."
Well, by "waving it away" I meant people who -when confronted by evidence of atrocities most find somewhere between offensive and unbearable- dismiss such atrocities as justifiable/excusable. That to me represents at the very least tacit support for such atrocities. So it's almost never genuine indifference, with the possible exception of sociopaths who are constitutionally incapable of empathy.
Everyone who believes the nuclear attack on Hiroshima was justified, for example, would ideally be compelled to explain why to some blinded and burned Japanese child who has their intestines spilling out in the aftermath near ground zero. Harry Truman should probably go first, as there would be a very long line waiting to hear from him.
Just a plug for my novel “Metanoia”, an anti-dystopian history of the 21st Century, set (mostly) in East Anglia. Now available in full on my Substack:
https://dsimpson.substack.com/p/metanoia-243?r=3ezew
I’ve been reading Dante during Lent, amongst a few other things. This is the first time I’ve read it since all of the re-enchantment stuff has been popularized across the internet and podcast world, as well as myself becoming Orthodox. This time I’m trying to read it with new eyes in light of all that instead of the way universities beat reading into me. It works at times, and not so much at other times. Practice, practice, practice.
Our host mentioned the prayer of St Isaac the Syrian as something read by the Orthodox during Lent. Please let me share a few other titles that I have found amazingly edifying:
St John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent: one of the classics, and is helped by the gentle, good-humored spirit of the author (in contrast to the severity of St John Chrysostom).
The Optina Elders, Live Without Hypocrisy: a digest of the sayings and counsels of the elders of Optina Monastery (Russia, 19th century). Probably the since best spiritual book I have ever read. St Ambrose of Optina was the model for Dostoevsky's Zossima. Their counsels, based on the ontology/anthropology of the Eastern Fathers and the Hesychast tradition brought to Russia by St Paisius Velichkovsky, are incredible in their love, beauty and simplicity (and a good measure, IMHO, of the degree to which protestantism has been throughly "americanized." which is to say turned into the handmaid of Satan.
The St Herman of Alaska folks (this is the monastery founded by Fr Serpahin Rose) has put out seven volumes of the Optina Elders' teachings. Available on Amazon, and highly recommended. Also, a group called All Saints Press has put out the "Chronicles of Seraphim-Divyevo Monastery," a beautiful edition of the Russian life of the saint.
Why the Russians? Because one can argue successfully that both protestantism and latin Christianity have surrendered to "modernity"/Americanism and replaced whatever they may have taught with the radical egalitarianism and sexual obsession that is the american stock in trade.
The Russian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, withstood the most brutal persecution that the Church has ever experienced in its history, and it did not bow or break. Your mileage may vary, but to me that represents a certain "judgment of history" on American protestantism, and protestantism in general, and Russia, with Russian Orthodoxy.
Love the Optina Elders book series. For me their guidance for lay people still seem really relevant. There’s a school of thought that the flowering of Orthodoxy in 19 century Russia (Optina, St John of Kronstadt, St Ignatius Brianchaninov, St Theophan) was to strengthen the faithful for what was to come.
I completely agree with that.
I'm afraid that your references to American Protestantism resonate with my spirit. Of course, difficult to make broad generalizations, but we have sown the church-growth movement seeds and are now reaping the whirlwind of being conformed to the pattern of this world. As written elsewhere,
'“Come visit us, we won’t bite.” or “Hey, we’ll make you feel right at home with our coffee klatches before service.” or “Small groups. Small groups. Small groups.” or “We’ll make you feel so comfortable, our stage will look like a rock concert.”
“And pews?”
“Nah, they’re gone, we have comfy chairs now, come on, in!”
“And pulpits?”
“So yesterday! No, we have a guy wandering around and being very entertaining. And besides, he doesn’t need a place to put his Bible, because the words you are supposed to read are already on the screen. Same with the hymnals – they’re gone to – don’t need ‘em. Aren’t electronics wonderful!”
“And the sermons, are they derived from wrestling with the Scriptures?”
“No, they’re online, and come with screen-ready graphics. Easy peasy"'
But perhaps you refer to a deeper problem with the American Church?
What you describe is part of it. There is also the Christian Zionism thing.
I mentioned the other week that I'd just completed a book that focused on the early Irish monastic movement’s strategy of building “monastic towns,” that helped urbanize a rural Ireland, and re-civilize and evangelize a Western Europe that was devolving into barbarism (while in the process providing an introduction to Architecture, Urban Planning, and real estate development and why these are important for the Church). Basically a strategy for the Church in dark times centered around the built environment. Well it's now available on my website at: www.ward-davis.com
Blessings!
Ward
Interesting links as usual, I'm looking forward to the N.S. Lyons article.
Louise Perry had a fascinating conversation with Robin Hanson a few weeks ago. Hanson is a futurist who came on to discuss, in mournful tones... the decline of Machine modernity and the rise of a lower-tech, more religious future, due to demographic trends -- primarily, the urban monoculture's plummeting birth rates. It was an odd experience to follow along with the argument but have a completely different emotional response to it, but it was perhaps more interesting that the conversation happened at all. It seems like podcast hosts have a lot of incentive to invite on ideological friendlies, but here was a techno-futurist discussing trends with conservative-leaning Louise Perry, the common interest being birth rate trends, but the participants approaching the subject from fairly different angles. Curious if anyone else listened to it and had a similar reaction!
Not to sound too cheery about collapsing birth rates. Hanson actually made it sound like we could have a soft landing into a lower-tech, less globalized future, but it could be much more apocalyptic.
edit: here's the link https://www.louiseperry.co.uk/p/imagining-the-end-of-the-world-robin
Really interesting… I haven’t yet seen the video but have watched others on the theme of declining population. I find it interesting that it’s only now, in the past couple of years, that this theme has really received prominence when demographers and policymakers must have known about it for many years. Not sure why.
I’m definitely not an expert (as you’ll see!) but I doubt it would be a soft landing: there are just too many delicately-balanced and interlinked moving parts in our modern technocracy, and it’s fuelled by old-fashioned sentiment and herd instinct… so things could collapse very quickly. And if those who run the modern world have extracted what they want and no longer have an interest in managing it, or in managing a smooth decline, chaos will be inevitable for a while until we re-form into communities and gradually find a new and very different localist balance. Who knows, this might be wrong - but the extent to which ‘they’ have used chaos, confusion and disruption so far to usher in their degrading societal transformations suggests it might not be.
>I find it interesting that it’s only now, in the past couple of years, that this theme has really received prominence when demographers and policymakers must have known about it for many years.
My guess is willful blindness to things like this until it's impossible, and the last few years have made blindness to many things impossible.
Thanks for this.
Perry's site tells us that the interview is with Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute. Two observations (before I listen to the interview):
The Guardian this morning tells us the Future of Humanity Institute has closed down. It was funded by the now disgraced financier, Sam Bankman-Fried. Its philosophers, some of whom were friends of B-F, are concerned to promote 'effective altruism', which appears to involve encouraging the very wealthy to give away substantial parts of their fortune in order to promote planetary wellbeing. A Time magazine article, reachable from the Guardian article, suggests that monitoring and surveillance of individual behaviour are an element of the 'effective atruism' scheme. It sounds reminiscent of the schemes of Mr. Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
Economists at George Mason, generously funded by powerful business interests, have traditionally been associated with the Hayekian vision of free markets and laissez-faire, with much emphasis on individual liberty. How this can be made congruent with technology-led surveillance schemes is puzzling. Perhaps the Perry interview will clarify things.
Zuboff's book on surveillance capitalism came out in late 2018 (a must-read imo) and I have yet to see anyone on the economic Right take on its arguments. My suspicion would be that what would happen is the usual compartmentalization: nothing wrong with capitalism is ever a feature. It's always a bug. It's like the arguments about "woke capital" and "crony capitalism" -- the problem's always with the adjective, never the noun.
I'm somewhat familiar with effective altruism, and a large contingent of it is libertarian, so I would expect the contingent within EA supporting surveillance of individual behavior would be a minority. However a lot of effective altruists are also rationalist utilitarians, who are liable to adopt unintuitive beliefs due to complex thought experiments, so a lot of them could believe it's bad on one level but still support it.
I find it very interesting that both Yanis Varoufakis (left) and Joel Kotkin (right) have written books warning about the coming "techno-feudalism." I am reading the former now, and plan to read the latter next.
Varoufakis is one of the few thoroughly decent non-corrupted intellectuals on the Left. I don't agree with everything he writes but he has always been interesting.
reminds me of this (unintellectual) prediction of the same future https://walterkirn.substack.com/p/hamburger-fortune
Blessed Spring/Lent/Eastertide, friends. Please forgive me if I have missed previous discussion on this book, but I have just finished reading David James Duncan’s 2023 novel Sun House and want to recommend it to you all. It is a story that I hope will continue to work its good magic in me long after the first reading, and one that I intend to re-engage periodically in the hopes of picking up the many threads I wasn’t yet ready to see or hold the first time(s) through. Sun House is an obvious and immediate addition to my Library for the End of a World.
To read more about the book (the blurbs are true!): https://www.davidjamesduncan.com/sun-house
I loved that book. And love that it comes with a lengthy reading list at the end, which will take years to explore.
Yes! I too am grateful for this bibliography especially...depths upon depths here. I gave my husband The Ascetic Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian for his birthday last year (we know how to party)-- that should cover 538 days of serious reading, at the recommended pace of one page per day!
Nice! How has the reading been? That was one of the first books that I looked up, but was a bit daunted by the price as well as the length/depth. Would you say it's worth getting that volume rather than a shorter book of excerpts? I decided to start instead with Simone Weil, which has been wonderful. And then of course, I will have to delve into the Beguines. . .
I haven't read it (yet)! But-- I asked my husband and he said that since it's really geared toward monastics, he thinks a book of excerpts would be sufficient for a layperson. (And yes, most definitely spendy, but it is really quite beautiful and well bound.)
Thanks. l like Duncan, but somehow missed that one.
A question for my fellow Abbey readers who are Orthodox: I’ve been going to liturgies on Sundays for about a year now, and I’d like to go to a vespers service on Saturday night. Anything I should know about what to expect? How much different from a Sunday morning is it?
I’ve been going to an OCA church here in the U.S., for some context. Thanks!
It’s much shorter, less grand if that’s the right word. More intimate.
My small parish is also OCA, in the midwest, and our Saturday Vespers is usually a smaller group than Sunday morning, and the service is shorter-- around 45 minutes. There is no Eucharist, no homily, and it definitely has an evening/end of the day feel to it.
Thank you!
Interesting read in Compact today about machine bureaucratization of medicine.
Bonus points for mentioning Illich.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-pathologies-of-managerial-medicine/
Recently read Graham Pardun’s essay “Waving Farewell to Byzantium” on his Substack, Sabbath Empire. As someone who is Orthodox Curious but put off by the ultra factionalism it was just the piece I needed.