I just read Brian Millar's piece in the last hour. It was great but sobering. Plus there was a report released today that apparently 1 million children in the UK don't own a single book!
It got me thinking how the fact that the "transaction cost" of acquiring knowledge has decreased (e.g no need to go on your bike to the library, find the book, and take it home - you can just one click order or look on Wikipedia!) may have factored into our collapse in reading physical books. If knowledge is no longer precious or rare, then there is reduced incentive to go to the place where the knowledge can be found. In the past, someone who had read encyclopaedias from the library was seen as the fount of knowledge in the community/school/work. Now everyone has a portable fount of knowledge in their pockets (which is probably beeping at them for their attention as we speak).
The decreased transaction cost is far from the only (and certainly not the most important factor) but it is one I think we neglect to consider.
Thanks for your comment here and over at FPR. Coincidentally, I just finished reading this piece (https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-classroom-novel/). It looks at the same issue, but from the perspective of the educator. Talk about depressing, literacy, and the love of reading, is under attack by the very people tasked with teaching literature (at least in the US). Cheers, Brian
I read a book last year by Ivan Illich, "Deschooling Society" (in French, unfortunately, but reading in English, in France, especially books, is getting harder, Hadden...)
Illich has a very convincing case for the idea that the consumer society has been, and is, fueled by an institutionalized school system (I would say public OR private, but it's up to debate).
Over at your place, Brian, I left you a message about the role of generalizing (and democratizing...) reading for EVERYONE, and how those good intentions ? eventually work against us, and reading.
On the love of reading, maybe the love of anything but the screens is under attack, in a civilisation that is trying to dematerialize... us, too ?
In the next few weeks, maybe, I am going to pick up Plato's "Protagoras" dialogue in English translation, of course, because of a passage that my husband read to me a few nights ago. I have not forgotten what I learned in a classics class in college many years ago, Plato's myth of the cave, which I find very... timely for us, right now.
But... I am not worshipping Plato, or the Greek philosophical tradition, which has a lot of responsibility for what's happening to us right now.
Beyond the problem of reading, there is the problem of our love for our languages, the ones we speak, and that speak us, and make us live at the same time, and I don't see much of that right now. I see too much puritanism, from all sides.
Brian, the literature problem is quite old now, and is sucked up into the bigger problem of the status of fiction as imagination, traditionally opposed to.. that (in)famous truth.
That word is getting a lot of publicity these days...
In my bleaker and most melancholy moments, the world I see is one where our "liberators" come in to liberate us, but after a while, the chains slip right back into place, and with our own enthusiasm, to boot, before we even know what's happening. I admit that is a very bleak take on the situation...but Plato probably had that take, too, so it's not a new one.
"On the love of reading, maybe the love of anything but the screens is under attack, in a civilisation that is trying to dematerialize... us, too ?"
Debra, Thank you for the two thoughtful comments, her and over at FPR. I used the term "peak literacy" but didn't really explore it in the piece. It may be that we simply hit a high water mark last century? And are now reverting back to a new base line. I'm not sure.
BTW I blog (not substack) over at A South Roane Agrarian: https://www.wingedelmfarm.com/blog/. It is primarily a place for me to consider my life on the land. But I also frequently write on reading, childhood, and books. Cheers, Brian
Thank you for your reply. I may look at the blog, but... I am spending a lot of time in front of the screen these days... Way too much time, by the way.
I teach in a UK school. It (more and more) feels like a system designed to expose children to things they don't need to know, rather than what they do need to know. The Welsh government (my homeland) have brought in CSE (Comprehensive Sexuality Education) from 5 to 18. The UNESCO document it's based on (for global rollout) is an extremely uncomfortable read.
I think the effects are more serious than we imagine. When a young mind reads, it learns so much - patience, imagination, context, empathy, heroism and failure. We are - were - shaped by the books we read. Now the void is filled by froth - reality TV and social media, the here and now, quantity over quality to match our shortened attention spams.
Hi Brian I’m wondering if you have any children? I have 4 and 3 of them can’t get enough of books. To the extent that my youngest wouldn’t go see the new Hunger Games movie until she read the book first. Just because culture has changed doesn’t mean the thirst for knowledge is missing. I know I would have accelerated greatly if I didn’t have to leaf through encyclopaedias to find the answer to my question was usually missing. Now we have a massive information portal - the key is to learn how to use it and filter out what is true from what is not. It’s an exciting time - I’m all for encouraging new readers to explore rather than lamenting the statistics.
We don't. Since I am an optimistic pessimist, I tend to both lament and celebrate. It can get all so very confusing. Keep up the great work with your kids. They won't change the trajectory of the culture. But they will be the richer for their habits.
When I was a kid a trip to the local library was as (or more) exciting than a trip to the toy store. I couldn't believe I was allowed to simply walk out with a big bag of wondrous books for no money. That was a very different world, though, and children's books—no matter how colourful or magical their covers—cannot hope to compete today with a Playstation or iPad or Nintendo Switch for a child's attention if you give them that option. And most are given that option.
When my son—who *had* been given those options, my bad—was about 11 years old, he told me something strange. He said, "I wish there some place or some animal that no one knew about." No child of my generation would ever have had such a thought. My young son had had the entire world disenchanted for him by effortless access to an avalanche of information about absolutely everything, and was left wishing there was the tiniest scrap of mystery and wonder left. Broke my heart.
Oh, and are you planning on a "pilgrimage" to the UK's latest and most famous site of worship Paul? The Bristol Airport "Multi Faith" area (see something I wrote here https://overthefield.substack.com/p/the-vision-of-vanity)
I doubt you will find a well there though (or anything of substance or sacredness for that matter!)
Ahah... could there be somebody besides me who really can't understand the English fascination for Monty Python ? Am I truly a reactionary, and Puritan bigot for not appreciating Monty Python ?
I think you might need to have been a teenager when it first aired in the early 1970s. There really was no point in going to school the next day if you’d missed it. No overheard conversation made any sense...dead bishops on the landing, Norwegian blue parrots that were sleeping not dead, lumberjacks, Ministry of Silly Walks. The sadness is remembering it all as if was yesterday when I often can’t for the life of me remember where I’ve parked my car.
Thanks Paul, I so value your newsletter and these Salons are always a delight.
As for what is on my mind...
I've been thinking a lot recently about how we feel ever more caught, as a culture, between two kinds of story.
On the one hand, stories about technology-fuelled transcension of all human limits: material, social, and even bodily and organic. On the other, stories about collapse into a kind of permanently degraded afterworld.
It seems to me that if we can understand more about where these stories come from, and why we're telling them at ever increasing volume, then we'll have taken a step towards understand where we're at now.
I think at the heart of it all is a loss of faith in our collective agency. In the Global North the big arena of our collective lives, politics, has run out of stories to tell us about what the future looks like and how it can be beter than the past. Into that void steps the narratives of transcension told told by tech overlords, and narratives of collapse.
This version of modernity — or what you've so aptly called The Machine — has worked hard to make us believe that collective endeavour, or politics, is fruitless and debased. It's been pretty successful in that quest. Perhaps if we can regain some faith in our collective ability to shape our shared future, we can begin to tell different stories.
"It seems to me that if we can understand more about where these stories come from, and why we're telling them at ever increasing volume, then we'll have taken a step towards understand where we're at now."
This is such a great point, David. Such a wealth of leads to think about. I like your suggestion as the loss of faith in collective agency as a possible motive. Perhaps this comes from the question were we really ever able to collectively act at the global level effectively/should we even aspire to act at a global level?
Yes, I think this is so important. If we're to regain collective agency, then a part of that is understanding our collective lives at a much smaller, local, and more human scale.
The idea of some kind of grand collective human destiny is itself a product of modernity, and isn't really coherent. And now that this incoherence is becoming apparent, I think we're somewhat lost.
David, those two stories strike me as two versions of the same story. I think we can and perhaps should rather lean in to the fruitlessness of politics and of shaping our shared future and instead embrace merely inhabiting our inherited reality. On one level that is both a technotopia and a permanently degraded afterword, because that is what we have made it in our latest tower of babel project(s), but that's not really what it essentially is, which is Eden.
I think they are two sides of the same coin. They both arise out of an instrumentalised view of the world as a kind of Big Resource for us to use to our own ends.
I think a new inhabitation of reality as it really is indeed something to be desired. On the other hand, we are blessed/cursed to be able to think about our future and to attempt to realise new futures, and I don't think we can ever escape that tendency.
Perhaps. I definitely appreciate your emphasis on smaller and more local scale if we are to attempt changing things. I see a very big difference in what the looks like depending on whether we are oriented toward the future and it's infinite possible points of 'progress', or the past, and finding continuity with tradition and something like Lewis's 'Tao'.
The destruction of the Irish Celtic world in favour of the corporate multi ethnic territory is a catastrophe. Our author, this learned fellow, once opined, that the meaning of life is people, place and prayer. Place. I repeat Place!
Ireland for the Irish. The destruction of this at the hands of these leftist, religious maniacs is treason.
Rod Dreher mentioned the fact that the Irish never enslaved or colonized anyone. And still they must suffer lectures on "whiteness" from their elite politicians. Lord, have mercy!
Well as an English person living in Ireland for 33 years I embrace and honour the Celtic nature of my adopted home but have also seen how repressive Irish society had become in recent times, as a result of British rule and then the reaction to that, when the republic was formed and the Catholic Church in its most authoritarian form became essentially in charge. It’s easy to be romantic about old Ireland ( as I was when I first arrived in rural Kerry in 1990 ) but there was also a lot of darkness which needed to be lifted . While the Celtic tiger years and the disillusion with the church has led to a lot which saddens me , I still see a deep compassionate spirituality within Irish society which I hope will be able to find some balance in the coming years now it has been liberated from the rigid mores which caused so much suffering and the legacy of which I hear on Samaritan lines every week . Ireland is beautiful and little farms and small communities have their positive side …. I love knowing my neighbours well and living amongst people who will always help me out . However having lived in mud and poverty in my early years in Ireland seeking the simple life I understand why most Irish people are never going to go back to mud and poverty again if they can help it. Wise men such as John Moriarty , Darra Molloy and John o Donohue have enabled me to have an appreciation of the gentler and more Celtic forms of Christianity which existed in Ireland way back .
Hi Paul. I enjoyed your FPR talks recently, and I'm hoping you can give me the source for your quote from Fr. Sibley, the one about "What we will not preserve, we cannot share." I've looked all over but can't find books or blogs by the man. Would love to read more if he's publishing. Thank you for any pointers.
Thank you, Paul. Don't go to a lot of trouble. I just thought the quote was a good one and was hoping to hear more of his thinking. But I know you have other things on your plate. Take care.
This brings to mind the famous Deuteronomy quote : "what you receive from your fathers, inherit it in order to be able to possess it." I think that is the quote. Freud thought that it came from Goethe, even in the 19th century, but no, it comes from Deuteronomy (maybe not the most readable book in the Old Testament...). I can't say where.
I like the quote from Fr. Sibley too, thanks for it.
[Paul introduces the quote at around 30:00 into the talk, just before the end.]
"What we will not preserve, we cannot share. This is true of forests, and rivers and streams, of art and scientific knowledge, of friendship, culture, and music. It is also true of faith, of worship and wisdom and theology. To jettison the past to make way for the future is not like throwing overboard excess baggage in a storm. It is rather to take an axe to one's own ship in the vain hope that one may be rescued by a more seaworthy vessel. Even in the midst of necessary change, the best sources of wisdom for making such transitions come from the past and the path of the moral wisdom handed down to us from one source or another. We're embedded in history, in culture, faith and art, for good or ill, consciously or unconsciously. It's our duty to make the best, most knowledgeable and most generous use of that tradition in service of the good. What is ill can't just be jettisoned, or it leaves a vaccuum that cries out to be filled. And the contours of what was thrown away shape the thing with which it is filled, a subterrenean influence that silently and unconsciously mars the future. What is ill in our past must rather be held up to the light and repented of. It is ultimately the rest of our tradition that tells us this is so."
The man's a clear-headed thinker and I like his prose style. Would like to find more from him.
The greatest proof to me of culture's flight from faith is the almost complete lack of reference in public spaces to the narrative arc of the Bible. Is the stark binary of the conflict between good and evil, played out in a hundred stories in scripture, too unsophisticated for us to give it any countenance at all? The responses one hears everywhere, unlike the insights shared in this disciplined space, are like deaf people trying to communicate with sign language because no one can hear.
Just finished the last book of C.S. Lewis's space trilogy last night (I got a book that had all the volumes back to back). They were fantastic. His descriptions about the internal spiritual fights the characters undergo really match how I experience what I perceive to be my own spiritual fights (in particular the narrator's battle at the beginning of Perelandria and of Mark in his cell).
Something that I've been thinking about though is Ransom's heel injury. It seems like a reference to Achilles but I'm not familiar enough with the story, and what I do know I wonder why the association of Ransom with Achilles would be made.
It gave a lot to think about, especially the nudity given my perspective in our over sexualized culture. But also inherent to that is that their experience with the environment is unmediated, direct. Technology (which clothing is a technology) has a mediating effect on our experience. My feet only experience the ground mediated through my shoes. But the ground here may damage my feet (I live in Texas, thorns and stickers are numerous). Paradise allows for an unmediated experience; Ransom scrapes his knees climbing the rocks, the Lady does not.
Lewis wrote such racy stuff. I have to hide the fact I'm reading him anytime I'm on public transport.
Seriously tho, I recall Lewis being a huge fan of Scottish fantasy writer David Lindsay's 'A Voyage to Arcturus'. That novel really only has huge fans, basically everyone who has ever read the crazy thing, which almost no one these days (or any other days) has. I recall there was brief nudity in there as well, and would not be surprised if that's where Lewis found the inspiration/lifted the idea for a scene like that.
Also, highly recommend you read ".. Arcturus". Even though it is unreadable. I still think about first reading that, and it's been nearly 40 years. One of the greatest novels ever written, by a guy with no ability to write with any level of skill at all.
Oh yes, it's re-issued from time to time. It's also out of copyright so you could find it on the net, but don't read it that way. You need to turn the pages and ponder in stunned bemusement what on Earth this man was thinking. I still hunt around for the amazing Savoy edition—which I coveteth with the obsessive fury of Gollum—but can never find one:
From Amazon "A baffling amalgam of mysticism, science fiction, sexual politics, and outrageous fantasy, A Voyage to Arcturus stands as one of the greatest works of untrammeled imagination ever achieved."
Perelandria reminded me of the Trump years or rather the reverse. Cabal makes the most sense of it all with the Evil one animating Trump in just the right degrees with Murdoch a thinly disguised lieutenant demon. Jerry Hall must have been lobotomized.
The Space Trilogy is so excellent and timely. I believe Ransoms injury isn’t so much a reference to Achilles as to the Fisher-King of Arthurian legend. I’m struggling to remember the details of his narrative, but he too has an injury that never heals, with great symbolic resonance.
Being a reference to an Arthurian story makes more sense... Turns out I'm not too familiar with them either (although I do remember thinking before they meet Merlin "but wasn't he a good guy?").
I thought that too, in addition to the Genesis reference. But the Fisher-King's wound is not in his heel; it's closer to the "place" of the donation of life.
I think the wounded heel is more an Arthurian allusion—like to the Fisher King (and of course Ransom is the Pendragon, the heir of Arthur, of the realm of Logres)—as well as a biblical one (i.e., the serpent bruising the heel).
Mildly off topic, but I’d love it if you could upload a spoken-word version of your articles? It’s odd listening to an AI generated voice talk about the machine or getting away from it ask at a spiritual place hidden in some bracken, 10 miles from anywhere. Kind of breaks the spell.
I've never listened to that. In fact I didn't even know it was available. I don't recommend listening to it. I don't usually have time to record versions, but maybe with longer pieces in future I will think about it, if I can work out how.
You could upload some extant Kingsnorth audio from something like a podcast to ElevenLabs and make a custom voice for your personal use. Might get a bit spendy if you're having voice-synthesised Kingsnorth read loads of stuff, and also, you should get his permission to do so, and with his stance on technology in general and AI in particular, yeah I'll just say "please, no" on his behalf.
Just saying that's technically the best way to do it, if Karmically the worst.
It's quite extraordinary, really. It's to the point where your essays can be read in your voice speaking Mandarin Chinese, and native speakers would not be able to tell you are not perfectly fluent in the language, and of course no human performed the translation:
Last night I spent three hours with friends translating "Midsummer Night's Dream" into French ( a long haul project which will stretch out over a few years, probably...) and I can't say that I have doubts about translating Paul into Mandarin Chinese, and giving him a Chinese accent, that's how sure I am that machines CAN NOT DO THIS WORK even if we would like to believe they can.
Paul you can simply read aloud to an audio app on the phone which records it as an MP3 and then upload it to substack - no technical additions needed. Just a quiet room which can be difficult enough to organise! Happy to help you set it up if you can’t figure it out.
A friend recently developed eye problems caused by Lyme. She's a writer. And of course a huge reader. It made me think about the value of audio, which I never use, but would in that circumstance!
Lyme is pretty terrifying. I have a sister who lived until recently in Connecticut, which is crawling. She, her husband, their son, and even the dogs had all had it. She lived near the town of Lyme, in fact, where the original bioweapon was developed and leaked. Another friend a couple of years back developed a terribly devastating case of Lyme AND got COVID as well. So US bioweapons R&D hit him particularly hard. And he was perfectly healthy otherwise.
My sister told me recently how happy she was there were few ticks, and no Lyme, in Minnesota, by virtue of the fact winter temps can hit 40F below. Personally I'm happy to skip both, thanks. I've heard Irish beaches have a Lyme problem, though it's not much talked about because tourism.
I started reading Mark Boyle's book, and he mentioned that his smallholding is close to where you live. I was wondering how often you see him and how similar your day-to-day living and relationship with technology is to his. Obviously, I'm not asking you to share too much personal detail, but I'm coming from a perspective of feeling increasingly frustrated by how much technology has enmeshed itself into my life and constantly looking for ways to unmachine myself as much as possible.
He is a few miles down the road from me. Usually we try to meet weekly to play chess and chew the fat. He is a raw barbarian if I am a cooked one. He uses no tech at all. It all depends on circumstance. With a family total withdrawal is harder. But it's about the drawing of lines.
Oh, and Matthew B. Crawford mentioned you in his interview with Andrew Sullivan. Said he's recently had a conversion experience, which was exciting to hear. I've followed his work for several years now.
I'm a lot less interested in big "grand scheme of things" discussions and more in the theme of small individual responsibilities. I had my cousin and nephew to dinner recently. Both talked a lot against the government - fair enough - saying they knew so many people who were, as my cousin put it, "on the bones of their arses." And what are either of you personally doing about that, I asked? They seemed taken aback, As if the existence of government absolved them from any personal individual responsibility for charitable work of their own. I find this occupies my thoughts at Christmas, a time when traditionally we were supposed to help and give to the poor and less fortunate, not to spend billions stuffingour faces and buying esch other unnecessary gifts. What is our responsibiity to others less fortunate especially at this hard time of year? At Christmas, what do we have to give? We can each do only a little, so how best to utilise the gifts we have been given
A friend of mine asked in a group chat for prayers for a young mother she's been mentoring; the mom has recently come to Christ and is interested in amendment of life and her husband is not on board and has left her and their two small children. All of us nice Christian mothers shared our nice sincere prayers for her, and then one said: Does she need anything? Can we buy her kids Christmas presents? Coats? Art supplies? Could she use some pots of soup or casseroles for her freezer? I was ashamed that I had not thought of that myself. This is how we love each other, as human beings. We look for need and respond in love.
What you can do depends a lot on where you live. I think that people living in the cities are pretty hard hit by all the mistrust that the technology has been secreting (all those satellites out in space... watching us), and the breakdown of our flesh and blood contacts. Our social fabric, as we say in France.
During the Covid episode(s), we invited people to shows in our home, up to 30 people, for theater, music, with food afterwards. I'm a firm believer in food, around a table, for people in the best of cases to be able to meet "new" people. This is not easy at all right now.
In all fairness, "we" have organized a society against charity, and there are reasons for this : people without can feel humiliated by the need ? to ask a flesh and blood person for help, so... the institutions make things impersonal, and easier FOR THEM.
Are you... a slave because you ask for help ? When should you ask for help, and when should you try to develop the resources to "stand on your own feet" ? What is possible ? HOW MUCH IMAGINATION, INITIATIVE, and ENERGY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THIS ? Do we want to live in a society where everybody is not... equal, but the same, in their needs and gifts/capacities ? Isn't that where the pressure is going these days ?
A while ago I saw the film "Desert Flower", I think, in English, and it had scenes that go against our idea that most people are... not generous in their dealings with somebody in distress, if that person approaches them in a certain way.
There are still a lot of miracles going on in the world these days. Most often we don't hear about them, and once again, for good reasons.
In the New Testament writings, Jesus never tells the people he heals to go out and do publicity for him by telling their stories. He had a good reason for doing this, one that we have a hard time understanding, and it's not just because he wanted some respite from the authorities.
On Christmas, I don't want to do the Machine's work for it : our family get together from far away, and we eat well without stuffing our faces either. I can still find pleasure in my food, thank God. Nobody goes into debt to organize a big hoohaw (spelling ?), but it is good to HAVE THE TIME AND THE HOLIDAY so that we can get together. Do we really want to play Christmas down to the extent that this precious time gets axed ?? Not me. Our President would love to axe Christmas. His hands are itching to do it.
As for what we can do, I have committed myself to buying a piece of meat once a month, at the end of the month, for somebody I know who is in need, and with adult children at home. It is definitely not easy to have a social relationship with this person, but not from my lack of trying.
I am very distressed/annoyed/alarmed at this pending (and outrageously, intentionally, vague and broad and draconian) "Hate Speech" legislation pending (seemingly unstoppably) here in Ireland.
First, the reaction to the stabbing being used to push this legislation looked to my eyes like a textbook Shock Doctrine response. Now, I'm a cynical person when it comes to politics but the ... discipline(?) with which the Irish media and government worked in tandem and seemed to almost gloss over the mass-stabbing while rushing to bash a public traumatised by bloodied children in the streets of Dublin to flog this legislation was really unsettling. What's going on looks to me like a mass-gaslighting of Irish people, who apparently mistakenly believed they lived in a country with a unique and valuable (and rather world-renowned) culture and understood what that country and culture were about.
Second, as an American expat I'm almost incapable of not speaking my mind, as decades of First Amendment protections have rendered me completely inept at self-censorship, even were I inclined to accept its imposition. I'd require a literal gag, in addition to taking a sledgehammer to my gadgets (which I'd love to do, but only have food money through holding my nose and dealing with technology). A few years back a friend was trying to encourage me to move to France instead of Ireland and I told him, "I can't live in France, I'm liable to say something true about Israel."
Third, I just don't want Ireland ruined like this, through not only uncontrolled immigration but through any transformation into a tiny little authoritarian epigone and foot-soldier for the rest of the rotten imperium. It's burned into my soul the first afternoon I spent here wandering St. Stephen's Green, of this utterly alien energy, of non-anxious families—untroubled by any of that omnipresent, brittle ambience of potentially murderous violence common in the USA—smiling and leisurely enjoying a beautiful day with friends and toddlers and babies in strollers. It was like the moment where the dark energy finally disperses for Frodo on Mount Doom after the ring has been destroyed and he exclaims in relief, "Ohh it's gone!"
It took me some 11 years of chasing down officially-certified paperwork, of filing long, formal applications, and waiting (again, *years*) for my Foreign Birth registration to actually be approved and my passport shipped. That people are arriving by the busload, undocumented and from who knows where, with not even my modest connection of an Irish granny or anything else, and who didn't spend years dreaming of one day getting here, and who care about Ireland about as much as I care about the tiny Republic of Togo. Gah it all makes me ill.
I've considered returning to the armed madhouse that is America over this, where I can at least maintain my freedom of speech and conscience before whatever variation of slavering USian corporate-government orcs—agribusiness, pharma, health insurance cartels, the for-profit prison complex, who knows—eventually make a stew of me. I don't want to, though. I want the safe and beautiful country of friendly people it seemed I was living in when I first arrived here. Watching this stuff happening to Ireland is like witnessing the scouring of the Shire.
I don't have the cash, the youth, or the educational attainment to get through the NZ bureaucracy. Also, I'm an old white guy, no one is going to let me hop a bus/plane of undocumented, unvetted, no-account dudes in track pants and hoodies and set me up in Auckland. I don't make the chop when it comes to being able to just show up in random Western countries and look for people to rape or stab. Besides, from what I've read the WEF stranglehold on NZ is already tighter than the nascent one they're getting around Ireland's throat.
I am not an expert on this. Things that happen here are for example Indian Dairy owners getting robbed and beaten in their own shops because there is no right to self defence. A few were stabbed to death.
The new coalition government is also introducing policy about not kowtowing to international entities such as WHO and the UN in order to protect NZ's national interests. I hope this includes the WEF.
I have an evil confession to make, Optera... I actually thought you were a woman until I read this discussion... (see, now that's the problem with the pseudos. Don't throw your hands up in despair in front of the screen, please don't hold it too much against me ; I often get caught in these stupid faux pas...)
I understand EXACTLY what you are talking about, and why you moved to Ireland, even though when I left the U.S. over 40 years ago, I don't really think that I had the illusion that I was heading for Frodon's Shire, scoured of the last remnants of Moria and its influences, any more than I knew what I was fleeing at the time.
Life in France is about as far from the Shire as you can get...and I have told Paul that France could possibly be the epicenter of the Machine, and not any Anglo-Saxon country, that's how devoted the French are to the religion of rationalism, and the activity of rationalizing everything and everyone, too.
No, you would not be happy in France, even in the countryside now.
Ireland... still sounds/looks lovely, the way that Paul is showing it to us...
Keep away from the big cities, Optera.
Who knows what would have happened if Adolf Hitler had not got sucked up in Vienna, down and out in its streets at 14 years old, and without Orwell's culture or... humor ?
Yeah, I need to change this stupid icon as too many people imagine I'm some trans chick with dreadlocks or something, when in fact I look like a dissolute cab driver nearing retirement.
France strikes me as seductive in the same way New York City is: all that culture, all that ceaseless energy, all the glittering lights and promise of the spoils of modern civilisation laid out before you like some wondrous buffet. "If it can't be found in New York City it does not exist." I remember going into Manhattan as a teenager seeking obscure and/or just-released albums and singles and the city never let me down once. Such places are simultaneously miracles and traps.
I also knew just enough about French colonialism when I was toying with emigrating there to know that country was bad mojo in a very similar way to the United States. And in this regard my French pal was very helpful, showing me videos of the ongoing litany of French exploits in Africa; of all the coups and assassinations and skullduggery and I thought, "this is exactly the shit I'm trying to move away from."
The only mistake I made in choosing Ireland is that I thought the place was so insignificant as a potential sacrifice zone that it would be uninteresting to such imperial monstrosities. Turns out the hegemonic powers intend to leave not a hectare of land anywhere on the surface of the globe that is not part of the undifferentiated gruel of neoliberal oppression and misery and—most importantly—cheap, obedient, labor.
Turns out you're either in the imperial centre consuming the world or you're out on the fringes being consumed by it. Poor little Ireland has always been eaten by someone.
"Yeah, I need to change this stupid icon as too many people imagine I'm some trans chick with dreadlocks or something, when in fact I look like a dissolute cab driver nearing retirement."
Yup, that's exactly what I was imagining, too. It figures. Sometimes I don't have enough imagination, but... I am not alone, not alone...
I wasn't concerned about colonization when I came here, although the year I arrived was the year that the American embassy got attacked in Iran, and Jimmy Carter lost the next election because he was such a... nice guy, and that's not what the U.S. wanted any more. (my simplistic analysis)
Nowhere is safe anymore if there are empty Coca Cola cans on obscure mountain passes high up in Afghanistan...
I don't really agree with you about the litany of "neoliberal oppression and misery, and cheap, obedient labor", though. I think you underestimate the desire of the colonized to be colonized. In the end, we are perhaps more the victims of our.. success, as our failures.
"I think you underestimate the desire of the colonized to be colonized."
Doesn't track with all the conflict/resistance more or less every classical colonial project meets, and there are fewer and fewer such projects left for this reason. Even the French appear about to be finally ejected from Africa.
If you're talking about neocolonialism, that's a more slippery beast (necessitated largely by failed colonial projects having been effectively opposed nearly worldwide by various sorts of resistance movements, precisely because people *do not* want to be colonised).
I'd argue people don't want neocolonialism any more than classical colonialism, but it's intentionally made far more diffuse and is obscured behind technocratic jargon meant to cow ordinary people. It's essentially colonialism where the population is knocked unconscious by the political equivalent of ether, such that the usual imperialist suspects can rape and pillage with greater deniability and less popular resistance.
And neocolonialism is what is consuming Ireland today. No matter what the government and corporate media claim, the Irish—to the extent they recognise the scam—do not want it. This is the reason for the "Hate Speech" laws: neocolonialism only works if the victim remains drugged and oblivious to what is happening to them.
If what you're saying is, "people want a Western lifestyle, so rather than a rape this is a form of consensual sex", well, where did this desire for a Western lifestyle come from? And is the reason most still can't have it because neoliberal economic strategies keep wages at always more or less subsistence levels?
Say what you like about America, but on my recent trip to the west I did experience what that much-vaunted cowboy style 'freedom' is about, and I liked it. For all its faults, America's protection of freedom of expression is increasingly precious, and I was impressed by how many people I met who knew it, and were prepared to defend it. Ireland, alas for it, is full of people who are barely aware of what's happening, and who trust authority almost mindlessly.
The First Amendment is under constant attack, but fundamentally Americans like to gripe and jostle each other too much to ever give it up. I admit I don't understand Ireland and its politics, and was hoping I would never have to. I'll say that for a people with such a pugnacious reputation I'm stunned at how supine most are in response to what's happening. There seems to be no sense at all of the trap they're wandering into.
I had also imagined on moving here that I would find a country of rebel fighters. Instead I found a highly conformist nation and it puzzled me for a long time. I still don't quite understand it either, but Angela Nagle, in the piece I linked to above, has the best explanation I've yet read for how the Irish are being so easily rolled over by their ruling class - but also why that may not last:
'The Irish have a historical reputation as fighters and rebels. The truth is closer to what the writer Conor Fitzgerald has well described: an exaggerated national tendency toward long-overdue consensus collapse. We have a norm of extreme parochial conformism, overseen by an arrogant priestly class that permits not a single word of dissent in the public square, until one day there is an explosive reaction against the priests.'
I am in Australia and part of the 5% who didn’t take the ‘one size fits all, makes little sense’ medicine. I really empathise with that bewildering feeling. Reminds me of that scene in Braveheart where Wallace is ready for battle and they all ride off. I feel as though my life long, Left wing activist mates just suddenly left the building. What were those principles for if they’re so easily dropped when things get a little hard? How can a person so devoted to exposing corporate/government collusions & systemic corruption suddenly stop caring about corporate/government collusions & systemic corruption? I thought we all really cared and now I fear that it was no more than a fashion stance/statement. It’s left me feeling so utterly alone & I’m so grateful to read likeminded souls on these platforms - and whoever keeps paying for me to stay on here! Ever grateful. #gothehobbits
Bless you Monique- as a US based fellow of 71 who opted out of the jabs- and I can surely identify with the "what the %$^& happened to my allegedly liberal and anti-establishment buddies???" Feeling. It is bewildering- how to keep in relationship with several who I've worked extra hard to stay cordial with who surely think I've lost my mind... Have lost many friends and made a bunch of new ones... The worlds of permaculture, trees, homesteading, home school (some visit here regularly..) and building more resilient local communities has strengthened some connections...Smiles
I have been in France for over 40 years now. I was here when François Mitterand, from the Socialist Party, got elected, and the People were dancing in the streets. At the time, the American government was apparently very worried about Mitterand's election, and had nightmare visions of a revival of the Communist nightmare. Visions that are somewhat justified, too, because France's left's position on Communism has always been exceedingly irrational ? pointedly ignoring the evil points of Communist totalitarianism in Russia, for example, and the French can be very volatile. Witness the French Revolution, which was not exactly a... tea party.
François Mitterand, during his.. reign, shall we say, abolished the death penalty in France, but he also began dismantling the media public service that made France's television so... great, in my opinion. So.. elevated, the way that I like my culture most of the time. Elevated, but particularly elevating, and not debasing.
I tell my French friends who are still.. pretending ? that they have "leftist" values that I am not really sure what happens when the left gains political power. After all, if your political identity is all about combating the current social order, what happens when you are in the position of defending that order, when you get elected ? I don't understand.
From François Mitterand's election, and going forward, left oriented governments have done more of the Machine's work for it than supposedly conservative governments, or at least as much.
So... whose side are we on ? What is... "the left" and its sympathies when it now has so much political and ideological clout in people's minds ?
But I keep harping on what I feel to be a crucial incident in the Gospels when Jesus is anointed by a woman, to the outrage of his disciples who think that the precious object should have been sold, and the proceeds given to the poor, and he says "the poor you shall always have with you, but not me". That sentence heavily contributed to getting him killed, because he didn't want to get caught up in the big temptation of loving categories (the poor and the downtrodden) over the dead bodies of real, flesh and blood people.
You wrote: 'From François Mitterand's election, and going forward, left oriented governments have done more of the Machine's work for it than supposedly conservative governments, or at least as much.'
Unsophisticated/inexperienced American liberals will claim the Democrats are, "the lesser of two evils', whereas those who've watched the circus long enough realise the Democrats are "the more effective of two evils". Finally, there's the hyper-sophisticated Chomsky type, who collapses back into championing lesser-evilism before, presumably, dying in complete despair.
That’s why when the Covid lockdowns started around the world in autumn 2020, I went from Greece back to America, specifically to Sedona, Arizona (red state) where there were no face-nappy mandates or lockdowns. I rented an AirBnB in Sedona until February 2021, and went back to Greece, to a small island where there are 3 policemen, not enough to enforce mask mandates, ferry passenger departures and arrivals, plus the occasional theft of a goat or two. In Arizona, the locals were friendly, not terrified. Covid didn’t change them. This is why I keep my US passport and I’m not about to give it up, like some friends of mine who did a few years ago, for tax reasons, and they’re not even that rich. During Covid, these friends regretted terribly their decision to give up their US passports.
Hate speech laws everywhere are intended, and used, as blunt objects with which to bludgeon opposition ideas and speech. It will be no different in Ireland.
As Rod Dreher has oft pointed out, there's really no escaping this, whether in Ireland or the US - there is no place to run to that is safe. I too used to dream of getting away from here, but one thing I've had drummed into me by my turn to Christ is that we can only encounter God in the present, not in the future or in the past, and that means putting down roots where we are and living faithfully there, even if it costs us.
I've been trying to counsel a catechumen in my church about this - he's in his 30s and is a rolling stone, always looking for a "safe" place, and therefore never really present where he is (even on a camping trip he couldn't focus long enough to play a game of cards). He's been in his current apartment for a good 4 years (long for him), and hasn't even hung anything on the walls yet because he keeps dreaming of finding some place he can "bug out".
I don't disagree with this, and in fact the comment I just posted a few minutes ago (not a reply, simply a comment) is basically me expressing something else I've been feeling: I'm not of a mind to abandon Ireland to people gaslighting the country, slandering its people, trying to shame them for being white people in fuckin' Ireland, and lying about their actual agenda. Fuck. That.
There are those who recognize the base narrative, but they are rarely if ever found in public commentary. I can not recommend too highly a recent wake up call by Diana Pasulka. Her book, "American Cosmic," should be considered mandatory reading by anyone sober about the future.
There is a prophecy from St. Malachy that before the end of the world, Ireland will sink beneath the waves. Not sunk yet, but metaphorically sinking, all things pass away.
I am not an expert on this. Here is a fragment. Not just St. Malachy but St. Columba and others.
This prediction of the end-time flood of Ireland is often associated with another prophecy attributed to St. Colmcille (who is also known by his Latin name St. Columba).
I concede a favour to them without exception,
and St Patrick also did concede the same;
that seven years before the last day,
the sea shall submerge Eirin by one inundation
The above prophecy is believed to be taken from a 9th century document titled Colum Cille cecinit, but so far the earliest source it can be traced back to is O'Kearney, N. The Prophecies of Ss. Columbkille, Maeltamlacht, Ultan, Seadhna, Coireall, Bearcan, Malachy, &tc (Dublin: John O’Daly, 1856) – a book which is known to contain many spurious prophecies formulated as rhetoric for the 1798 Irish rebellion. It is possible that this quatrain is based on an earlier source or tradition, such as the Leabhar Breac, but currently its origins remains untraceable. It is unlikely that the original prophecy was made by St. Colmcille, but instead may have developed from the earlier, almost certainly authentic literature concerning the life of St. Patrick.
The prophecy of Ireland being destroyed by end-time floods is intimately related to the other material in Public and private revelation which tells of an eschatological inundation, and seems to be inextricably linked to the threat posed by the collapse of the volcano Cumbre Vieja into the Atlantic ocean (see the earlier post Mega-tsunami, where I show how this event is connected with the "great mounatin, burning with fire" being thrown into the sea in Rev 8:8, as well as several other biblical passages).
As we can see from the diagram below, Ireland is one of the countries that would be most affected be a mega-tsunami generated by the collapse of the volcano Cumbre Vieja in the Canary Islands.
American style immigration, really? The Euro-zone predates our ill-advised open borders thanks to our present Democratic administration. We got this open border stuff from across the pond in my opinion. Even Obama was deporter-in-chief back in the day. But somewhere along the way, his party quit believing in the rule of law as well as basic fairness to the typical play-by-the-rules immigrant who waits for years on end to land here legally. Trump, Kennedy and the Republican also-rans hold to a belief in national sovereignty. Biden & co are the outliers.
Open borders is new everywhere. But the 'multicultural nation of immigrants' is very much an American notion. America is a new country. Ireland is a very old one.
Immigration in the US, until recent times, was not multicultural. It was predominately Christian and European/Western. Very critical to a successful melting pot rather than the current unassimilated mess.
True enough I'm sure. All I can say is that in both Britain and Ireland, US-style melting-pot multiculturalism was held up as a model that would justify and explain mass immigration on a scale that had never before been seen.
One could also look to the Romans. They were masters of assimilating new cultures into the empire. This was done by ruling with a relatively light touch in conquered lands and by carefully assimilating those who moved to Rome and environs. When they failed to do this and allowed mass immigration to go unchecked they soon found the immigrantals sacking Rome.
Western monotheists are not different cultures, though their language, customs and tastes may vary.
For sure, Rome tended to extend a carrot much more than using beatings, but the history of Rome is very long, and includes the period of republican Rome and post republican Rome which still had a senate that was appointed by the "princeps", who, I think, was not called an emperor, at least for a long time (but the people may still even have been voting. Gotta check on that one.). The Romans... had a long history of hating kings, monarchy and "tyranny", which is a Greek word. During the period that preceded the civil wars that lead to a shift in political power that we call "empire" (but WE call it that, and the Romans had a different take on it), Rome "conquered" much of Italy, Latium, I think it was callled, and assimilated what it conquered by extending citizenship. During this period, there was mass migration into urban Rome, which put a lot of pressure on the political structure.
For info, the EU has been extending citizenship around Europe in much the same way that Rome did, and with few requirements attached (abolishing the death penalty is one...or used to be).
My take on this is that Latin, coupled with Greek, is the motor of Rome's power : at around 200 A.D. you could go from England ? all the way over to Romania ? and around the Mediterranean and North Africa while speaking Latin OR Greek to get by. That's quite impressive, and... THAT'S EMPIRE.
And we would do well to sit up and take notice, because once again, Latin and Greek are in the arena ? because of the way they colonized the English language way back when. And.. ARE STILL COLONIZING.
Re. multiculturalism... Often, the newcomers in western countries have more traditional, less Machine-oriented cultures than the long-term residents. I have been quite impressed by the sense of community, friendliness, and solidarity among the Sikhs, for example. Not atomized, although subject to the same technocratic and anti-transcendent forces as the rest of us.
Very true, and actually that is the hope, for me at least. Being married to a Sikh myself, I have much personal experience of the traditional Indian family, which at its best contains a lot of things our atomised culture has lost. Ironically, London, which is now minority-English, is the most religious and traditionalist place in Britain.
Ireland is old indeed. When I was watching the videos of Irish natives being beaten up by the “new arrivals” the thought crossed my mind, “Well, that’s probably how the Vikings acted at first too.”
America is weird in this regard. We had very high immigration until the 1920s, then jammed the doors almost entirely for half a century. Depending on where you fall on the argument, those 50 years of restrictive immigration were either golden years where the Melting Pot really did amalgamate the various immigrant groups into a more cohesive society, or else you claim those 50 years were ones of horrible racism and repression coupled to jingoism.
But to crib a line from The Big Lebowski, "say what you want about it, at least it's an ethos." Put another way, at least we had a policy that we followed in both eras. Since the 1970s, we have had official policies and laws aplenty, which (for various reasons of political expediency) our government has enforced only selectively. We have no real policy, no ethos, only anarchy.
On Ireland’s authoritarian trajectory: this week emailed my former boss who lives in Shankill (south of Dublin) a parody meme about the Irish government imprisoning folks for unacceptable memes. Later I thought, oops.
I honestly think Musk could (finally) do something useful here and hide all X/twitter images in all feeds in Ireland behind a content warning reading: "This may be a meme, there is no telling if it could get you a felony wrap in Ireland. We advise you not to view it and instead work on first fixing your government."
I just read Brian Millar's piece in the last hour. It was great but sobering. Plus there was a report released today that apparently 1 million children in the UK don't own a single book!
It got me thinking how the fact that the "transaction cost" of acquiring knowledge has decreased (e.g no need to go on your bike to the library, find the book, and take it home - you can just one click order or look on Wikipedia!) may have factored into our collapse in reading physical books. If knowledge is no longer precious or rare, then there is reduced incentive to go to the place where the knowledge can be found. In the past, someone who had read encyclopaedias from the library was seen as the fount of knowledge in the community/school/work. Now everyone has a portable fount of knowledge in their pockets (which is probably beeping at them for their attention as we speak).
The decreased transaction cost is far from the only (and certainly not the most important factor) but it is one I think we neglect to consider.
Hadden,
Thanks for your comment here and over at FPR. Coincidentally, I just finished reading this piece (https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-classroom-novel/). It looks at the same issue, but from the perspective of the educator. Talk about depressing, literacy, and the love of reading, is under attack by the very people tasked with teaching literature (at least in the US). Cheers, Brian
I read a book last year by Ivan Illich, "Deschooling Society" (in French, unfortunately, but reading in English, in France, especially books, is getting harder, Hadden...)
Illich has a very convincing case for the idea that the consumer society has been, and is, fueled by an institutionalized school system (I would say public OR private, but it's up to debate).
Over at your place, Brian, I left you a message about the role of generalizing (and democratizing...) reading for EVERYONE, and how those good intentions ? eventually work against us, and reading.
On the love of reading, maybe the love of anything but the screens is under attack, in a civilisation that is trying to dematerialize... us, too ?
In the next few weeks, maybe, I am going to pick up Plato's "Protagoras" dialogue in English translation, of course, because of a passage that my husband read to me a few nights ago. I have not forgotten what I learned in a classics class in college many years ago, Plato's myth of the cave, which I find very... timely for us, right now.
But... I am not worshipping Plato, or the Greek philosophical tradition, which has a lot of responsibility for what's happening to us right now.
Beyond the problem of reading, there is the problem of our love for our languages, the ones we speak, and that speak us, and make us live at the same time, and I don't see much of that right now. I see too much puritanism, from all sides.
Brian, the literature problem is quite old now, and is sucked up into the bigger problem of the status of fiction as imagination, traditionally opposed to.. that (in)famous truth.
That word is getting a lot of publicity these days...
In my bleaker and most melancholy moments, the world I see is one where our "liberators" come in to liberate us, but after a while, the chains slip right back into place, and with our own enthusiasm, to boot, before we even know what's happening. I admit that is a very bleak take on the situation...but Plato probably had that take, too, so it's not a new one.
"On the love of reading, maybe the love of anything but the screens is under attack, in a civilisation that is trying to dematerialize... us, too ?"
Debra, Thank you for the two thoughtful comments, her and over at FPR. I used the term "peak literacy" but didn't really explore it in the piece. It may be that we simply hit a high water mark last century? And are now reverting back to a new base line. I'm not sure.
BTW I blog (not substack) over at A South Roane Agrarian: https://www.wingedelmfarm.com/blog/. It is primarily a place for me to consider my life on the land. But I also frequently write on reading, childhood, and books. Cheers, Brian
Thank you for your reply. I may look at the blog, but... I am spending a lot of time in front of the screen these days... Way too much time, by the way.
I teach in a UK school. It (more and more) feels like a system designed to expose children to things they don't need to know, rather than what they do need to know. The Welsh government (my homeland) have brought in CSE (Comprehensive Sexuality Education) from 5 to 18. The UNESCO document it's based on (for global rollout) is an extremely uncomfortable read.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260770
I worry England will be next. If so, my career may need a rethink. Ivan Illich would have had a field day with this!
The Safer Schools Alliance charity have written a report about it which is quite damning.
https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Comprehensive-Sexuality-Education-A-Review-of-UNESCO-and-WHO-Standards.pdf
Our children are being targeted by organisations that should have their best interests at heart, but don't.
I think the effects are more serious than we imagine. When a young mind reads, it learns so much - patience, imagination, context, empathy, heroism and failure. We are - were - shaped by the books we read. Now the void is filled by froth - reality TV and social media, the here and now, quantity over quality to match our shortened attention spams.
Hi Brian I’m wondering if you have any children? I have 4 and 3 of them can’t get enough of books. To the extent that my youngest wouldn’t go see the new Hunger Games movie until she read the book first. Just because culture has changed doesn’t mean the thirst for knowledge is missing. I know I would have accelerated greatly if I didn’t have to leaf through encyclopaedias to find the answer to my question was usually missing. Now we have a massive information portal - the key is to learn how to use it and filter out what is true from what is not. It’s an exciting time - I’m all for encouraging new readers to explore rather than lamenting the statistics.
We don't. Since I am an optimistic pessimist, I tend to both lament and celebrate. It can get all so very confusing. Keep up the great work with your kids. They won't change the trajectory of the culture. But they will be the richer for their habits.
When I was a kid a trip to the local library was as (or more) exciting than a trip to the toy store. I couldn't believe I was allowed to simply walk out with a big bag of wondrous books for no money. That was a very different world, though, and children's books—no matter how colourful or magical their covers—cannot hope to compete today with a Playstation or iPad or Nintendo Switch for a child's attention if you give them that option. And most are given that option.
When my son—who *had* been given those options, my bad—was about 11 years old, he told me something strange. He said, "I wish there some place or some animal that no one knew about." No child of my generation would ever have had such a thought. My young son had had the entire world disenchanted for him by effortless access to an avalanche of information about absolutely everything, and was left wishing there was the tiniest scrap of mystery and wonder left. Broke my heart.
Oh, and are you planning on a "pilgrimage" to the UK's latest and most famous site of worship Paul? The Bristol Airport "Multi Faith" area (see something I wrote here https://overthefield.substack.com/p/the-vision-of-vanity)
I doubt you will find a well there though (or anything of substance or sacredness for that matter!)
Lord have mercy!
This thing looks like something cooked up by Monty Python.
Ahah... could there be somebody besides me who really can't understand the English fascination for Monty Python ? Am I truly a reactionary, and Puritan bigot for not appreciating Monty Python ?
I think you might need to have been a teenager when it first aired in the early 1970s. There really was no point in going to school the next day if you’d missed it. No overheard conversation made any sense...dead bishops on the landing, Norwegian blue parrots that were sleeping not dead, lumberjacks, Ministry of Silly Walks. The sadness is remembering it all as if was yesterday when I often can’t for the life of me remember where I’ve parked my car.
Yes. 😉
Good lord! One thinks that, no, this can't possibly be, but yet there is this horrid little box. All is lost.
Thanks Paul, I so value your newsletter and these Salons are always a delight.
As for what is on my mind...
I've been thinking a lot recently about how we feel ever more caught, as a culture, between two kinds of story.
On the one hand, stories about technology-fuelled transcension of all human limits: material, social, and even bodily and organic. On the other, stories about collapse into a kind of permanently degraded afterworld.
It seems to me that if we can understand more about where these stories come from, and why we're telling them at ever increasing volume, then we'll have taken a step towards understand where we're at now.
I think at the heart of it all is a loss of faith in our collective agency. In the Global North the big arena of our collective lives, politics, has run out of stories to tell us about what the future looks like and how it can be beter than the past. Into that void steps the narratives of transcension told told by tech overlords, and narratives of collapse.
This version of modernity — or what you've so aptly called The Machine — has worked hard to make us believe that collective endeavour, or politics, is fruitless and debased. It's been pretty successful in that quest. Perhaps if we can regain some faith in our collective ability to shape our shared future, we can begin to tell different stories.
"It seems to me that if we can understand more about where these stories come from, and why we're telling them at ever increasing volume, then we'll have taken a step towards understand where we're at now."
This is such a great point, David. Such a wealth of leads to think about. I like your suggestion as the loss of faith in collective agency as a possible motive. Perhaps this comes from the question were we really ever able to collectively act at the global level effectively/should we even aspire to act at a global level?
Yes, I think this is so important. If we're to regain collective agency, then a part of that is understanding our collective lives at a much smaller, local, and more human scale.
The idea of some kind of grand collective human destiny is itself a product of modernity, and isn't really coherent. And now that this incoherence is becoming apparent, I think we're somewhat lost.
David, those two stories strike me as two versions of the same story. I think we can and perhaps should rather lean in to the fruitlessness of politics and of shaping our shared future and instead embrace merely inhabiting our inherited reality. On one level that is both a technotopia and a permanently degraded afterword, because that is what we have made it in our latest tower of babel project(s), but that's not really what it essentially is, which is Eden.
I think they are two sides of the same coin. They both arise out of an instrumentalised view of the world as a kind of Big Resource for us to use to our own ends.
I think a new inhabitation of reality as it really is indeed something to be desired. On the other hand, we are blessed/cursed to be able to think about our future and to attempt to realise new futures, and I don't think we can ever escape that tendency.
Perhaps. I definitely appreciate your emphasis on smaller and more local scale if we are to attempt changing things. I see a very big difference in what the looks like depending on whether we are oriented toward the future and it's infinite possible points of 'progress', or the past, and finding continuity with tradition and something like Lewis's 'Tao'.
The destruction of the Irish Celtic world in favour of the corporate multi ethnic territory is a catastrophe. Our author, this learned fellow, once opined, that the meaning of life is people, place and prayer. Place. I repeat Place!
Ireland for the Irish. The destruction of this at the hands of these leftist, religious maniacs is treason.
Rod Dreher mentioned the fact that the Irish never enslaved or colonized anyone. And still they must suffer lectures on "whiteness" from their elite politicians. Lord, have mercy!
It is possible there are some faerie folk who might protest that, but it likely wouldn't be a large protest.
Lordy, Lordy!
But... could we see them anyway, (don't even mention count them...) ?
;-)
Technically, the Irish colonised Scotland. The Scoti were an Irish tribe. If there were any Picts left, they might take issue with Rod ;-)
Well as an English person living in Ireland for 33 years I embrace and honour the Celtic nature of my adopted home but have also seen how repressive Irish society had become in recent times, as a result of British rule and then the reaction to that, when the republic was formed and the Catholic Church in its most authoritarian form became essentially in charge. It’s easy to be romantic about old Ireland ( as I was when I first arrived in rural Kerry in 1990 ) but there was also a lot of darkness which needed to be lifted . While the Celtic tiger years and the disillusion with the church has led to a lot which saddens me , I still see a deep compassionate spirituality within Irish society which I hope will be able to find some balance in the coming years now it has been liberated from the rigid mores which caused so much suffering and the legacy of which I hear on Samaritan lines every week . Ireland is beautiful and little farms and small communities have their positive side …. I love knowing my neighbours well and living amongst people who will always help me out . However having lived in mud and poverty in my early years in Ireland seeking the simple life I understand why most Irish people are never going to go back to mud and poverty again if they can help it. Wise men such as John Moriarty , Darra Molloy and John o Donohue have enabled me to have an appreciation of the gentler and more Celtic forms of Christianity which existed in Ireland way back .
Good post
Hi Paul. I enjoyed your FPR talks recently, and I'm hoping you can give me the source for your quote from Fr. Sibley, the one about "What we will not preserve, we cannot share." I've looked all over but can't find books or blogs by the man. Would love to read more if he's publishing. Thank you for any pointers.
I will see if I can find that. My sources tend to be scattered all over the place but I must have got it from somewhere!
Thank you, Paul. Don't go to a lot of trouble. I just thought the quote was a good one and was hoping to hear more of his thinking. But I know you have other things on your plate. Take care.
This brings to mind the famous Deuteronomy quote : "what you receive from your fathers, inherit it in order to be able to possess it." I think that is the quote. Freud thought that it came from Goethe, even in the 19th century, but no, it comes from Deuteronomy (maybe not the most readable book in the Old Testament...). I can't say where.
I like the quote from Fr. Sibley too, thanks for it.
For those who might be wondering, here's the entire quote from Fr. Cassian Sibley, as pulled from Paul's opening keynote address at the recent Front Porch Republic event, available here: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/11/paul-kingsnorths-opening-prayer/
[Paul introduces the quote at around 30:00 into the talk, just before the end.]
"What we will not preserve, we cannot share. This is true of forests, and rivers and streams, of art and scientific knowledge, of friendship, culture, and music. It is also true of faith, of worship and wisdom and theology. To jettison the past to make way for the future is not like throwing overboard excess baggage in a storm. It is rather to take an axe to one's own ship in the vain hope that one may be rescued by a more seaworthy vessel. Even in the midst of necessary change, the best sources of wisdom for making such transitions come from the past and the path of the moral wisdom handed down to us from one source or another. We're embedded in history, in culture, faith and art, for good or ill, consciously or unconsciously. It's our duty to make the best, most knowledgeable and most generous use of that tradition in service of the good. What is ill can't just be jettisoned, or it leaves a vaccuum that cries out to be filled. And the contours of what was thrown away shape the thing with which it is filled, a subterrenean influence that silently and unconsciously mars the future. What is ill in our past must rather be held up to the light and repented of. It is ultimately the rest of our tradition that tells us this is so."
The man's a clear-headed thinker and I like his prose style. Would like to find more from him.
The greatest proof to me of culture's flight from faith is the almost complete lack of reference in public spaces to the narrative arc of the Bible. Is the stark binary of the conflict between good and evil, played out in a hundred stories in scripture, too unsophisticated for us to give it any countenance at all? The responses one hears everywhere, unlike the insights shared in this disciplined space, are like deaf people trying to communicate with sign language because no one can hear.
Just finished the last book of C.S. Lewis's space trilogy last night (I got a book that had all the volumes back to back). They were fantastic. His descriptions about the internal spiritual fights the characters undergo really match how I experience what I perceive to be my own spiritual fights (in particular the narrator's battle at the beginning of Perelandria and of Mark in his cell).
Something that I've been thinking about though is Ransom's heel injury. It seems like a reference to Achilles but I'm not familiar enough with the story, and what I do know I wonder why the association of Ransom with Achilles would be made.
I love Lewis's alternate vision of Eden and the fall in Peralandra
It gave a lot to think about, especially the nudity given my perspective in our over sexualized culture. But also inherent to that is that their experience with the environment is unmediated, direct. Technology (which clothing is a technology) has a mediating effect on our experience. My feet only experience the ground mediated through my shoes. But the ground here may damage my feet (I live in Texas, thorns and stickers are numerous). Paradise allows for an unmediated experience; Ransom scrapes his knees climbing the rocks, the Lady does not.
Well said. Greetings fellow Texan.
Lewis wrote such racy stuff. I have to hide the fact I'm reading him anytime I'm on public transport.
Seriously tho, I recall Lewis being a huge fan of Scottish fantasy writer David Lindsay's 'A Voyage to Arcturus'. That novel really only has huge fans, basically everyone who has ever read the crazy thing, which almost no one these days (or any other days) has. I recall there was brief nudity in there as well, and would not be surprised if that's where Lewis found the inspiration/lifted the idea for a scene like that.
Also, highly recommend you read ".. Arcturus". Even though it is unreadable. I still think about first reading that, and it's been nearly 40 years. One of the greatest novels ever written, by a guy with no ability to write with any level of skill at all.
Now, that's a ringing endorsement!
Can the book be found?
Oh yes, it's re-issued from time to time. It's also out of copyright so you could find it on the net, but don't read it that way. You need to turn the pages and ponder in stunned bemusement what on Earth this man was thinking. I still hunt around for the amazing Savoy edition—which I coveteth with the obsessive fury of Gollum—but can never find one:
https://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/arcturus.html
From Amazon "A baffling amalgam of mysticism, science fiction, sexual politics, and outrageous fantasy, A Voyage to Arcturus stands as one of the greatest works of untrammeled imagination ever achieved."
Well, now you have my curosity piqued.
Perelandria reminded me of the Trump years or rather the reverse. Cabal makes the most sense of it all with the Evil one animating Trump in just the right degrees with Murdoch a thinly disguised lieutenant demon. Jerry Hall must have been lobotomized.
The Space Trilogy is so excellent and timely. I believe Ransoms injury isn’t so much a reference to Achilles as to the Fisher-King of Arthurian legend. I’m struggling to remember the details of his narrative, but he too has an injury that never heals, with great symbolic resonance.
Being a reference to an Arthurian story makes more sense... Turns out I'm not too familiar with them either (although I do remember thinking before they meet Merlin "but wasn't he a good guy?").
I thought that too, in addition to the Genesis reference. But the Fisher-King's wound is not in his heel; it's closer to the "place" of the donation of life.
Dana
I think the wounded heel is more an Arthurian allusion—like to the Fisher King (and of course Ransom is the Pendragon, the heir of Arthur, of the realm of Logres)—as well as a biblical one (i.e., the serpent bruising the heel).
I would think that for Lewis, rather than Achilles (which of course he knew), it hearkens to Genesis 3.15:
"I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Ransom is doing real battle with the Serpent, our true enemy.
Dana
Mildly off topic, but I’d love it if you could upload a spoken-word version of your articles? It’s odd listening to an AI generated voice talk about the machine or getting away from it ask at a spiritual place hidden in some bracken, 10 miles from anywhere. Kind of breaks the spell.
I've never listened to that. In fact I didn't even know it was available. I don't recommend listening to it. I don't usually have time to record versions, but maybe with longer pieces in future I will think about it, if I can work out how.
Thank you
You could upload some extant Kingsnorth audio from something like a podcast to ElevenLabs and make a custom voice for your personal use. Might get a bit spendy if you're having voice-synthesised Kingsnorth read loads of stuff, and also, you should get his permission to do so, and with his stance on technology in general and AI in particular, yeah I'll just say "please, no" on his behalf.
Just saying that's technically the best way to do it, if Karmically the worst.
So Luddite am I that I didn't know this was even possible, though I'm also not surprised.
It's quite extraordinary, really. It's to the point where your essays can be read in your voice speaking Mandarin Chinese, and native speakers would not be able to tell you are not perfectly fluent in the language, and of course no human performed the translation:
https://youtu.be/ZPW6CS192xE?
Last night I spent three hours with friends translating "Midsummer Night's Dream" into French ( a long haul project which will stretch out over a few years, probably...) and I can't say that I have doubts about translating Paul into Mandarin Chinese, and giving him a Chinese accent, that's how sure I am that machines CAN NOT DO THIS WORK even if we would like to believe they can.
Paul you can simply read aloud to an audio app on the phone which records it as an MP3 and then upload it to substack - no technical additions needed. Just a quiet room which can be difficult enough to organise! Happy to help you set it up if you can’t figure it out.
A friend recently developed eye problems caused by Lyme. She's a writer. And of course a huge reader. It made me think about the value of audio, which I never use, but would in that circumstance!
Lyme is pretty terrifying. I have a sister who lived until recently in Connecticut, which is crawling. She, her husband, their son, and even the dogs had all had it. She lived near the town of Lyme, in fact, where the original bioweapon was developed and leaked. Another friend a couple of years back developed a terribly devastating case of Lyme AND got COVID as well. So US bioweapons R&D hit him particularly hard. And he was perfectly healthy otherwise.
My sister told me recently how happy she was there were few ticks, and no Lyme, in Minnesota, by virtue of the fact winter temps can hit 40F below. Personally I'm happy to skip both, thanks. I've heard Irish beaches have a Lyme problem, though it's not much talked about because tourism.
Hi Paul,
I started reading Mark Boyle's book, and he mentioned that his smallholding is close to where you live. I was wondering how often you see him and how similar your day-to-day living and relationship with technology is to his. Obviously, I'm not asking you to share too much personal detail, but I'm coming from a perspective of feeling increasingly frustrated by how much technology has enmeshed itself into my life and constantly looking for ways to unmachine myself as much as possible.
He is a few miles down the road from me. Usually we try to meet weekly to play chess and chew the fat. He is a raw barbarian if I am a cooked one. He uses no tech at all. It all depends on circumstance. With a family total withdrawal is harder. But it's about the drawing of lines.
Oh, and Matthew B. Crawford mentioned you in his interview with Andrew Sullivan. Said he's recently had a conversion experience, which was exciting to hear. I've followed his work for several years now.
I didn't know that. I'm a fan of his too. I will have a listen to that.
I'm a lot less interested in big "grand scheme of things" discussions and more in the theme of small individual responsibilities. I had my cousin and nephew to dinner recently. Both talked a lot against the government - fair enough - saying they knew so many people who were, as my cousin put it, "on the bones of their arses." And what are either of you personally doing about that, I asked? They seemed taken aback, As if the existence of government absolved them from any personal individual responsibility for charitable work of their own. I find this occupies my thoughts at Christmas, a time when traditionally we were supposed to help and give to the poor and less fortunate, not to spend billions stuffingour faces and buying esch other unnecessary gifts. What is our responsibiity to others less fortunate especially at this hard time of year? At Christmas, what do we have to give? We can each do only a little, so how best to utilise the gifts we have been given
A friend of mine asked in a group chat for prayers for a young mother she's been mentoring; the mom has recently come to Christ and is interested in amendment of life and her husband is not on board and has left her and their two small children. All of us nice Christian mothers shared our nice sincere prayers for her, and then one said: Does she need anything? Can we buy her kids Christmas presents? Coats? Art supplies? Could she use some pots of soup or casseroles for her freezer? I was ashamed that I had not thought of that myself. This is how we love each other, as human beings. We look for need and respond in love.
What you can do depends a lot on where you live. I think that people living in the cities are pretty hard hit by all the mistrust that the technology has been secreting (all those satellites out in space... watching us), and the breakdown of our flesh and blood contacts. Our social fabric, as we say in France.
During the Covid episode(s), we invited people to shows in our home, up to 30 people, for theater, music, with food afterwards. I'm a firm believer in food, around a table, for people in the best of cases to be able to meet "new" people. This is not easy at all right now.
In all fairness, "we" have organized a society against charity, and there are reasons for this : people without can feel humiliated by the need ? to ask a flesh and blood person for help, so... the institutions make things impersonal, and easier FOR THEM.
Are you... a slave because you ask for help ? When should you ask for help, and when should you try to develop the resources to "stand on your own feet" ? What is possible ? HOW MUCH IMAGINATION, INITIATIVE, and ENERGY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THIS ? Do we want to live in a society where everybody is not... equal, but the same, in their needs and gifts/capacities ? Isn't that where the pressure is going these days ?
A while ago I saw the film "Desert Flower", I think, in English, and it had scenes that go against our idea that most people are... not generous in their dealings with somebody in distress, if that person approaches them in a certain way.
There are still a lot of miracles going on in the world these days. Most often we don't hear about them, and once again, for good reasons.
In the New Testament writings, Jesus never tells the people he heals to go out and do publicity for him by telling their stories. He had a good reason for doing this, one that we have a hard time understanding, and it's not just because he wanted some respite from the authorities.
On Christmas, I don't want to do the Machine's work for it : our family get together from far away, and we eat well without stuffing our faces either. I can still find pleasure in my food, thank God. Nobody goes into debt to organize a big hoohaw (spelling ?), but it is good to HAVE THE TIME AND THE HOLIDAY so that we can get together. Do we really want to play Christmas down to the extent that this precious time gets axed ?? Not me. Our President would love to axe Christmas. His hands are itching to do it.
As for what we can do, I have committed myself to buying a piece of meat once a month, at the end of the month, for somebody I know who is in need, and with adult children at home. It is definitely not easy to have a social relationship with this person, but not from my lack of trying.
Life is very complicated...even on a daily basis.
I love this 🤩 well done on the shows at home. Wish I lived near you! It would have been just the morale booster I needed. 🙏🏻
Thank you for the kind words. I am still doing the shows at home, and people still enjoy being in my home for them.
I am very distressed/annoyed/alarmed at this pending (and outrageously, intentionally, vague and broad and draconian) "Hate Speech" legislation pending (seemingly unstoppably) here in Ireland.
First, the reaction to the stabbing being used to push this legislation looked to my eyes like a textbook Shock Doctrine response. Now, I'm a cynical person when it comes to politics but the ... discipline(?) with which the Irish media and government worked in tandem and seemed to almost gloss over the mass-stabbing while rushing to bash a public traumatised by bloodied children in the streets of Dublin to flog this legislation was really unsettling. What's going on looks to me like a mass-gaslighting of Irish people, who apparently mistakenly believed they lived in a country with a unique and valuable (and rather world-renowned) culture and understood what that country and culture were about.
Second, as an American expat I'm almost incapable of not speaking my mind, as decades of First Amendment protections have rendered me completely inept at self-censorship, even were I inclined to accept its imposition. I'd require a literal gag, in addition to taking a sledgehammer to my gadgets (which I'd love to do, but only have food money through holding my nose and dealing with technology). A few years back a friend was trying to encourage me to move to France instead of Ireland and I told him, "I can't live in France, I'm liable to say something true about Israel."
Third, I just don't want Ireland ruined like this, through not only uncontrolled immigration but through any transformation into a tiny little authoritarian epigone and foot-soldier for the rest of the rotten imperium. It's burned into my soul the first afternoon I spent here wandering St. Stephen's Green, of this utterly alien energy, of non-anxious families—untroubled by any of that omnipresent, brittle ambience of potentially murderous violence common in the USA—smiling and leisurely enjoying a beautiful day with friends and toddlers and babies in strollers. It was like the moment where the dark energy finally disperses for Frodo on Mount Doom after the ring has been destroyed and he exclaims in relief, "Ohh it's gone!"
It took me some 11 years of chasing down officially-certified paperwork, of filing long, formal applications, and waiting (again, *years*) for my Foreign Birth registration to actually be approved and my passport shipped. That people are arriving by the busload, undocumented and from who knows where, with not even my modest connection of an Irish granny or anything else, and who didn't spend years dreaming of one day getting here, and who care about Ireland about as much as I care about the tiny Republic of Togo. Gah it all makes me ill.
I've considered returning to the armed madhouse that is America over this, where I can at least maintain my freedom of speech and conscience before whatever variation of slavering USian corporate-government orcs—agribusiness, pharma, health insurance cartels, the for-profit prison complex, who knows—eventually make a stew of me. I don't want to, though. I want the safe and beautiful country of friendly people it seemed I was living in when I first arrived here. Watching this stuff happening to Ireland is like witnessing the scouring of the Shire.
You could always try New Zealand. The governement here is about to pass free speech legislation.
I don't have the cash, the youth, or the educational attainment to get through the NZ bureaucracy. Also, I'm an old white guy, no one is going to let me hop a bus/plane of undocumented, unvetted, no-account dudes in track pants and hoodies and set me up in Auckland. I don't make the chop when it comes to being able to just show up in random Western countries and look for people to rape or stab. Besides, from what I've read the WEF stranglehold on NZ is already tighter than the nascent one they're getting around Ireland's throat.
The ice is melting here. It is expensive but you won't get stabbed unless you try pretty hard.
I've heard tell the Mines of Moria can get pretty rough, and that people have in fact been stabbed. Or at least, hobbits have...
I am not an expert on this. Things that happen here are for example Indian Dairy owners getting robbed and beaten in their own shops because there is no right to self defence. A few were stabbed to death.
The new coalition government is also introducing policy about not kowtowing to international entities such as WHO and the UN in order to protect NZ's national interests. I hope this includes the WEF.
I have an evil confession to make, Optera... I actually thought you were a woman until I read this discussion... (see, now that's the problem with the pseudos. Don't throw your hands up in despair in front of the screen, please don't hold it too much against me ; I often get caught in these stupid faux pas...)
I understand EXACTLY what you are talking about, and why you moved to Ireland, even though when I left the U.S. over 40 years ago, I don't really think that I had the illusion that I was heading for Frodon's Shire, scoured of the last remnants of Moria and its influences, any more than I knew what I was fleeing at the time.
Life in France is about as far from the Shire as you can get...and I have told Paul that France could possibly be the epicenter of the Machine, and not any Anglo-Saxon country, that's how devoted the French are to the religion of rationalism, and the activity of rationalizing everything and everyone, too.
No, you would not be happy in France, even in the countryside now.
Ireland... still sounds/looks lovely, the way that Paul is showing it to us...
Keep away from the big cities, Optera.
Who knows what would have happened if Adolf Hitler had not got sucked up in Vienna, down and out in its streets at 14 years old, and without Orwell's culture or... humor ?
Yeah, I need to change this stupid icon as too many people imagine I'm some trans chick with dreadlocks or something, when in fact I look like a dissolute cab driver nearing retirement.
France strikes me as seductive in the same way New York City is: all that culture, all that ceaseless energy, all the glittering lights and promise of the spoils of modern civilisation laid out before you like some wondrous buffet. "If it can't be found in New York City it does not exist." I remember going into Manhattan as a teenager seeking obscure and/or just-released albums and singles and the city never let me down once. Such places are simultaneously miracles and traps.
I also knew just enough about French colonialism when I was toying with emigrating there to know that country was bad mojo in a very similar way to the United States. And in this regard my French pal was very helpful, showing me videos of the ongoing litany of French exploits in Africa; of all the coups and assassinations and skullduggery and I thought, "this is exactly the shit I'm trying to move away from."
The only mistake I made in choosing Ireland is that I thought the place was so insignificant as a potential sacrifice zone that it would be uninteresting to such imperial monstrosities. Turns out the hegemonic powers intend to leave not a hectare of land anywhere on the surface of the globe that is not part of the undifferentiated gruel of neoliberal oppression and misery and—most importantly—cheap, obedient, labor.
Turns out you're either in the imperial centre consuming the world or you're out on the fringes being consumed by it. Poor little Ireland has always been eaten by someone.
Things get really discouraging when you figure out how eager the multitudes are to be consumed...
How else can you rationalize all the disposable diapers in China ?? and the cell phones in the Madagascar bush ?
"Yeah, I need to change this stupid icon as too many people imagine I'm some trans chick with dreadlocks or something, when in fact I look like a dissolute cab driver nearing retirement."
Optera, Thanks for the good laugh this morning.
Yup, that's exactly what I was imagining, too. It figures. Sometimes I don't have enough imagination, but... I am not alone, not alone...
I wasn't concerned about colonization when I came here, although the year I arrived was the year that the American embassy got attacked in Iran, and Jimmy Carter lost the next election because he was such a... nice guy, and that's not what the U.S. wanted any more. (my simplistic analysis)
Nowhere is safe anymore if there are empty Coca Cola cans on obscure mountain passes high up in Afghanistan...
I don't really agree with you about the litany of "neoliberal oppression and misery, and cheap, obedient labor", though. I think you underestimate the desire of the colonized to be colonized. In the end, we are perhaps more the victims of our.. success, as our failures.
"I think you underestimate the desire of the colonized to be colonized."
Doesn't track with all the conflict/resistance more or less every classical colonial project meets, and there are fewer and fewer such projects left for this reason. Even the French appear about to be finally ejected from Africa.
If you're talking about neocolonialism, that's a more slippery beast (necessitated largely by failed colonial projects having been effectively opposed nearly worldwide by various sorts of resistance movements, precisely because people *do not* want to be colonised).
I'd argue people don't want neocolonialism any more than classical colonialism, but it's intentionally made far more diffuse and is obscured behind technocratic jargon meant to cow ordinary people. It's essentially colonialism where the population is knocked unconscious by the political equivalent of ether, such that the usual imperialist suspects can rape and pillage with greater deniability and less popular resistance.
And neocolonialism is what is consuming Ireland today. No matter what the government and corporate media claim, the Irish—to the extent they recognise the scam—do not want it. This is the reason for the "Hate Speech" laws: neocolonialism only works if the victim remains drugged and oblivious to what is happening to them.
If what you're saying is, "people want a Western lifestyle, so rather than a rape this is a form of consensual sex", well, where did this desire for a Western lifestyle come from? And is the reason most still can't have it because neoliberal economic strategies keep wages at always more or less subsistence levels?
Anyway, apologies if I missed your point!
Say what you like about America, but on my recent trip to the west I did experience what that much-vaunted cowboy style 'freedom' is about, and I liked it. For all its faults, America's protection of freedom of expression is increasingly precious, and I was impressed by how many people I met who knew it, and were prepared to defend it. Ireland, alas for it, is full of people who are barely aware of what's happening, and who trust authority almost mindlessly.
The First Amendment is under constant attack, but fundamentally Americans like to gripe and jostle each other too much to ever give it up. I admit I don't understand Ireland and its politics, and was hoping I would never have to. I'll say that for a people with such a pugnacious reputation I'm stunned at how supine most are in response to what's happening. There seems to be no sense at all of the trap they're wandering into.
I had also imagined on moving here that I would find a country of rebel fighters. Instead I found a highly conformist nation and it puzzled me for a long time. I still don't quite understand it either, but Angela Nagle, in the piece I linked to above, has the best explanation I've yet read for how the Irish are being so easily rolled over by their ruling class - but also why that may not last:
'The Irish have a historical reputation as fighters and rebels. The truth is closer to what the writer Conor Fitzgerald has well described: an exaggerated national tendency toward long-overdue consensus collapse. We have a norm of extreme parochial conformism, overseen by an arrogant priestly class that permits not a single word of dissent in the public square, until one day there is an explosive reaction against the priests.'
I am in Australia and part of the 5% who didn’t take the ‘one size fits all, makes little sense’ medicine. I really empathise with that bewildering feeling. Reminds me of that scene in Braveheart where Wallace is ready for battle and they all ride off. I feel as though my life long, Left wing activist mates just suddenly left the building. What were those principles for if they’re so easily dropped when things get a little hard? How can a person so devoted to exposing corporate/government collusions & systemic corruption suddenly stop caring about corporate/government collusions & systemic corruption? I thought we all really cared and now I fear that it was no more than a fashion stance/statement. It’s left me feeling so utterly alone & I’m so grateful to read likeminded souls on these platforms - and whoever keeps paying for me to stay on here! Ever grateful. #gothehobbits
Bless you Monique- as a US based fellow of 71 who opted out of the jabs- and I can surely identify with the "what the %$^& happened to my allegedly liberal and anti-establishment buddies???" Feeling. It is bewildering- how to keep in relationship with several who I've worked extra hard to stay cordial with who surely think I've lost my mind... Have lost many friends and made a bunch of new ones... The worlds of permaculture, trees, homesteading, home school (some visit here regularly..) and building more resilient local communities has strengthened some connections...Smiles
I have been in France for over 40 years now. I was here when François Mitterand, from the Socialist Party, got elected, and the People were dancing in the streets. At the time, the American government was apparently very worried about Mitterand's election, and had nightmare visions of a revival of the Communist nightmare. Visions that are somewhat justified, too, because France's left's position on Communism has always been exceedingly irrational ? pointedly ignoring the evil points of Communist totalitarianism in Russia, for example, and the French can be very volatile. Witness the French Revolution, which was not exactly a... tea party.
François Mitterand, during his.. reign, shall we say, abolished the death penalty in France, but he also began dismantling the media public service that made France's television so... great, in my opinion. So.. elevated, the way that I like my culture most of the time. Elevated, but particularly elevating, and not debasing.
I tell my French friends who are still.. pretending ? that they have "leftist" values that I am not really sure what happens when the left gains political power. After all, if your political identity is all about combating the current social order, what happens when you are in the position of defending that order, when you get elected ? I don't understand.
From François Mitterand's election, and going forward, left oriented governments have done more of the Machine's work for it than supposedly conservative governments, or at least as much.
So... whose side are we on ? What is... "the left" and its sympathies when it now has so much political and ideological clout in people's minds ?
But I keep harping on what I feel to be a crucial incident in the Gospels when Jesus is anointed by a woman, to the outrage of his disciples who think that the precious object should have been sold, and the proceeds given to the poor, and he says "the poor you shall always have with you, but not me". That sentence heavily contributed to getting him killed, because he didn't want to get caught up in the big temptation of loving categories (the poor and the downtrodden) over the dead bodies of real, flesh and blood people.
This problem is still very much with us...
You wrote: 'From François Mitterand's election, and going forward, left oriented governments have done more of the Machine's work for it than supposedly conservative governments, or at least as much.'
Unsophisticated/inexperienced American liberals will claim the Democrats are, "the lesser of two evils', whereas those who've watched the circus long enough realise the Democrats are "the more effective of two evils". Finally, there's the hyper-sophisticated Chomsky type, who collapses back into championing lesser-evilism before, presumably, dying in complete despair.
I won’t die on a hill for many abstractions, but the first amendment is one of them.
From over here, I can promise you that's not an abstraction!
That’s why when the Covid lockdowns started around the world in autumn 2020, I went from Greece back to America, specifically to Sedona, Arizona (red state) where there were no face-nappy mandates or lockdowns. I rented an AirBnB in Sedona until February 2021, and went back to Greece, to a small island where there are 3 policemen, not enough to enforce mask mandates, ferry passenger departures and arrivals, plus the occasional theft of a goat or two. In Arizona, the locals were friendly, not terrified. Covid didn’t change them. This is why I keep my US passport and I’m not about to give it up, like some friends of mine who did a few years ago, for tax reasons, and they’re not even that rich. During Covid, these friends regretted terribly their decision to give up their US passports.
Hate speech laws everywhere are intended, and used, as blunt objects with which to bludgeon opposition ideas and speech. It will be no different in Ireland.
As Rod Dreher has oft pointed out, there's really no escaping this, whether in Ireland or the US - there is no place to run to that is safe. I too used to dream of getting away from here, but one thing I've had drummed into me by my turn to Christ is that we can only encounter God in the present, not in the future or in the past, and that means putting down roots where we are and living faithfully there, even if it costs us.
I've been trying to counsel a catechumen in my church about this - he's in his 30s and is a rolling stone, always looking for a "safe" place, and therefore never really present where he is (even on a camping trip he couldn't focus long enough to play a game of cards). He's been in his current apartment for a good 4 years (long for him), and hasn't even hung anything on the walls yet because he keeps dreaming of finding some place he can "bug out".
I don't disagree with this, and in fact the comment I just posted a few minutes ago (not a reply, simply a comment) is basically me expressing something else I've been feeling: I'm not of a mind to abandon Ireland to people gaslighting the country, slandering its people, trying to shame them for being white people in fuckin' Ireland, and lying about their actual agenda. Fuck. That.
There are those who recognize the base narrative, but they are rarely if ever found in public commentary. I can not recommend too highly a recent wake up call by Diana Pasulka. Her book, "American Cosmic," should be considered mandatory reading by anyone sober about the future.
There is a prophecy from St. Malachy that before the end of the world, Ireland will sink beneath the waves. Not sunk yet, but metaphorically sinking, all things pass away.
Really? I hadn't seen that.
I am not an expert on this. Here is a fragment. Not just St. Malachy but St. Columba and others.
This prediction of the end-time flood of Ireland is often associated with another prophecy attributed to St. Colmcille (who is also known by his Latin name St. Columba).
I concede a favour to them without exception,
and St Patrick also did concede the same;
that seven years before the last day,
the sea shall submerge Eirin by one inundation
The above prophecy is believed to be taken from a 9th century document titled Colum Cille cecinit, but so far the earliest source it can be traced back to is O'Kearney, N. The Prophecies of Ss. Columbkille, Maeltamlacht, Ultan, Seadhna, Coireall, Bearcan, Malachy, &tc (Dublin: John O’Daly, 1856) – a book which is known to contain many spurious prophecies formulated as rhetoric for the 1798 Irish rebellion. It is possible that this quatrain is based on an earlier source or tradition, such as the Leabhar Breac, but currently its origins remains untraceable. It is unlikely that the original prophecy was made by St. Colmcille, but instead may have developed from the earlier, almost certainly authentic literature concerning the life of St. Patrick.
The prophecy of Ireland being destroyed by end-time floods is intimately related to the other material in Public and private revelation which tells of an eschatological inundation, and seems to be inextricably linked to the threat posed by the collapse of the volcano Cumbre Vieja into the Atlantic ocean (see the earlier post Mega-tsunami, where I show how this event is connected with the "great mounatin, burning with fire" being thrown into the sea in Rev 8:8, as well as several other biblical passages).
As we can see from the diagram below, Ireland is one of the countries that would be most affected be a mega-tsunami generated by the collapse of the volcano Cumbre Vieja in the Canary Islands.
Lol - how wonderful!
American style immigration, really? The Euro-zone predates our ill-advised open borders thanks to our present Democratic administration. We got this open border stuff from across the pond in my opinion. Even Obama was deporter-in-chief back in the day. But somewhere along the way, his party quit believing in the rule of law as well as basic fairness to the typical play-by-the-rules immigrant who waits for years on end to land here legally. Trump, Kennedy and the Republican also-rans hold to a belief in national sovereignty. Biden & co are the outliers.
Open borders is new everywhere. But the 'multicultural nation of immigrants' is very much an American notion. America is a new country. Ireland is a very old one.
Immigration in the US, until recent times, was not multicultural. It was predominately Christian and European/Western. Very critical to a successful melting pot rather than the current unassimilated mess.
True enough I'm sure. All I can say is that in both Britain and Ireland, US-style melting-pot multiculturalism was held up as a model that would justify and explain mass immigration on a scale that had never before been seen.
One could also look to the Romans. They were masters of assimilating new cultures into the empire. This was done by ruling with a relatively light touch in conquered lands and by carefully assimilating those who moved to Rome and environs. When they failed to do this and allowed mass immigration to go unchecked they soon found the immigrantals sacking Rome.
Western monotheists are not different cultures, though their language, customs and tastes may vary.
This is a subject that interests me very much.
For sure, Rome tended to extend a carrot much more than using beatings, but the history of Rome is very long, and includes the period of republican Rome and post republican Rome which still had a senate that was appointed by the "princeps", who, I think, was not called an emperor, at least for a long time (but the people may still even have been voting. Gotta check on that one.). The Romans... had a long history of hating kings, monarchy and "tyranny", which is a Greek word. During the period that preceded the civil wars that lead to a shift in political power that we call "empire" (but WE call it that, and the Romans had a different take on it), Rome "conquered" much of Italy, Latium, I think it was callled, and assimilated what it conquered by extending citizenship. During this period, there was mass migration into urban Rome, which put a lot of pressure on the political structure.
For info, the EU has been extending citizenship around Europe in much the same way that Rome did, and with few requirements attached (abolishing the death penalty is one...or used to be).
My take on this is that Latin, coupled with Greek, is the motor of Rome's power : at around 200 A.D. you could go from England ? all the way over to Romania ? and around the Mediterranean and North Africa while speaking Latin OR Greek to get by. That's quite impressive, and... THAT'S EMPIRE.
And we would do well to sit up and take notice, because once again, Latin and Greek are in the arena ? because of the way they colonized the English language way back when. And.. ARE STILL COLONIZING.
Re. multiculturalism... Often, the newcomers in western countries have more traditional, less Machine-oriented cultures than the long-term residents. I have been quite impressed by the sense of community, friendliness, and solidarity among the Sikhs, for example. Not atomized, although subject to the same technocratic and anti-transcendent forces as the rest of us.
Very true, and actually that is the hope, for me at least. Being married to a Sikh myself, I have much personal experience of the traditional Indian family, which at its best contains a lot of things our atomised culture has lost. Ironically, London, which is now minority-English, is the most religious and traditionalist place in Britain.
Ireland is old indeed. When I was watching the videos of Irish natives being beaten up by the “new arrivals” the thought crossed my mind, “Well, that’s probably how the Vikings acted at first too.”
America is weird in this regard. We had very high immigration until the 1920s, then jammed the doors almost entirely for half a century. Depending on where you fall on the argument, those 50 years of restrictive immigration were either golden years where the Melting Pot really did amalgamate the various immigrant groups into a more cohesive society, or else you claim those 50 years were ones of horrible racism and repression coupled to jingoism.
But to crib a line from The Big Lebowski, "say what you want about it, at least it's an ethos." Put another way, at least we had a policy that we followed in both eras. Since the 1970s, we have had official policies and laws aplenty, which (for various reasons of political expediency) our government has enforced only selectively. We have no real policy, no ethos, only anarchy.
On Ireland’s authoritarian trajectory: this week emailed my former boss who lives in Shankill (south of Dublin) a parody meme about the Irish government imprisoning folks for unacceptable memes. Later I thought, oops.
I honestly think Musk could (finally) do something useful here and hide all X/twitter images in all feeds in Ireland behind a content warning reading: "This may be a meme, there is no telling if it could get you a felony wrap in Ireland. We advise you not to view it and instead work on first fixing your government."
Or maybe reading a book, or fixing a meal from scratch with real ingredients ?
What sort of crazy talk is that? \end snark
Well, gee willikers, I take a nap, after feeding sheep and cattle, and I wake up to a shout-out by Paul. I really should sleep more often.