The Monthly Salon: December
The Monthly Salon: December
An experiment with open conversation
Yule greetings to you all.
This week the Abbey of Misrule passed a milestone of sorts: this project now has 30,000 subscribers. I hasten to add that the vast majority are free subscribers - if that were not the case I would currently be sunning myself on a distant beach, probably on an island which I had newly purchased myself. Instead, here I am, planning another essay. But I’m happy that there’s so much interest in what I’m doing here.
To mark this occasion, and to celebrate advent, I’m going to carry out a little one-off Christmas experiment, and open comments on this monthly salon up to all my subscribers, both paid and unpaid. For those of you who are new here, the salon is a monthly post in which readers guide the conversation. You can talk about anything you want. Bring what you have to the party, and we’ll see what ensues.
Since this may be a bigger crowd than usual, it’s worth reminding you all of my comment policy:
On this issue, if on no other, I tend towards the Elon Musk worldview: you’re free to express your views here without being censored or cancelled or deleted for wrongthink. But I do clamp down hard on nastiness. Please feel free to disagree, to argue and to state your case - but do so with respect for others. Nasty arguments that get personal will be deleted, as will any obvious bigotry - racism, anti-semitism, etc. - that has nothing to do with the case you’re making.
I’ve never had any of these problems here, and I’m sure I won’t now, given the high quality of readership around these parts. But knowing what the Internet is like, I wanted to be clear.
Having said all that: fire away.
Hello Paul and everyone here.
I'm Monique from Australia and have spent most of last two years alone in a cabin while the world went mad. I have a tendency to fast forward around corners so 'saw' much of what played out in my mind around late March, 2020. Before this I had just spent the entire winter on the Isle of Iona and before that Romania, Slovenia and a third 'once a decade' wander around Auschwitz with Viktor Frankl in my ears asking myself once again, 'How on earth did this happen? And how did the Germans not know what was happening here?' I wouldn't dare compare the path of the unvaccinated to that of the Jewish people (ever) but I have gleaned a lot from Mattias Desmet's recent work and feel now I have a better understanding of the system and human beings post Covid.
I was going to celebrate my ability to withstand the onslaught that came second half of 2021 by coming to Ireland to see you and Martin, Paul (at the Priory) but it still feels a little weird out there in the big, wide world. A little understandable agoraphobia, perhaps. In all honesty navigating this year has been perhaps obviously surreal and I am so sorry I haven't been able to give you something back for your wonderful words, Paul. I will one day as being able to read what you are seeing and feeling when most of your friends and family are seeing something or nothing else has truly been a God send, as has pulling out my childhood bible myself. I wish I could show you the highlighted chapters in Revelations - truly. Why on earth would an 8 year old be so interested in all that mumbo jumbo?! Interesting feeling yourself speaking to you and current events 40 years later, across time. Just another layer to add to the oddness of feeling as though you're floating through time and space before being reconfigured, kind of like in the Wonka machine. I guess paradigm shifts aren't meant to be smooth sailing.
Regarding Elon Musk, (which I've just realised wasn't a prompt in your introductory email but I'll leave my thoughts here anyway), I admit to becoming a little addicted to it all suddenly. I listened to his live chat on Twitter with a few others (and 100k listeners). There's a change of the guard feeling about it all which is no surprise, and once again, taking out the middle man and the ever generous overlords. The mainstream media - just another institution destined to fall? I believe him when he speaks about the 'preciousness' of free speech and how rare it is to experience this. I also loved what he said about the arcs of civilisations and how ignorant we can be when on an 'up swing'. He certainly has an impressive mind and unless I'm utterly naive, this Twitter move certainly feels to be coming from a good intention. It also takes courage. How The Establishment is going after him now - and Matt Taibbi since part one of 'The Twitter Files' dropped. It's all just so revealing. The powers that be don't seem too concerned about giving their hand away, it seems, yet I guess there aren't many looking as closely as some of us.
Having said ALL that, I mustn't forget that ultimately it's just a billionaire's race to building the infrastructure for transhumanism and streamline all of it into one global system. Musk's 'If you can't beat it, join it' attitude is his modus operandi/long game, and so impressive and well intentioned as the man might be, no thanks. I have been writing about all that concerns most of us for years and the inevitable split when it comes to Late Stage Capitalism. It's only Instagram rants but my hashtag is always the same - go the hobbits. In Tolkenesque times what other conclusion is there? I guess that's always been my answer to the whole thing. I can't help but be wedded to the beauty and wonder of the natural world so I think ultimately, it's going to be a game of staying in our hearts and being present with all that is.
Thank you for the opportunity. So happy to be in good company and be able to say thank you. Thank you again Paul, and thank you also to Rhys Wildermuth. Love you Rhys, if you are reading this. Your writing has also held my heart in tac t and I am greatly indebted to you both. Good health to all reading this. Monique x
Yesterday I played a little with the ChatGPT app (https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/), an AI app that aims to help people have better informed conversations. One question that I asked was Will it rain in Heaven tomorrow?, and when the app said that 'since everything is supposed to be perfect in Heaven, it probably won't', I said that rain was good, so why wouldn't it rain in Heaven? The dialogue that followed afterwards was a very tedious repetition of the same idea by the app: 'everything is supposed to be perfect in Heaven, and it probably has other means to nourish the plants than rain', and also an even more tedious repetion of an apology, the app being sorry it had made me believe that it had said rain was not good. It made me uncomfortable, to be frank. It was like talking to a politician.