As much as I have gotten tired of talking about this virus, it is important to address the following; Covid-19 has had disastrous impacts on Generation Z. Whether we like to admit it or not, Gen Z is based on a culture of avoiding social interaction, virtual relationships and a general pessimistic outview of life.
The confinements we found ourselves in due to the pandemic, led us to migrate from real human life, to the material world of virtual interaction. Although this might not have seemed to be such a problem for a generation which shows great aversion to in-person interaction, however this was anything but the case.
The best way one could analyse and scrutinise the essence which makes up a millennial, one wouldnât have to look further than from the structureless abyss which we know as the internet.
This period of lockdown has in a weird way reversed some of the progressive stirrings taking place within the subconscious of a Gen-z individual. This overload of isolationâ encompassed by a general lack of social gatherings, in-person learning and cultural legacy has led this generation to ever so slightly and in a gradual manner, become more sensitive to the present late-civilisational decay which is surrounding them.
This can be seen through the different aesthetic styles promoted online. Such aesthetic styles include retrowave, post-modern, steampunk, fantasy ect. The obsession with such aesthetics does not necessarily stem from visual pleasure. Rather, it offers an escapist utopia for those stuck in a dull and grey worldâ from a world characterised by social media expectations, lockdowns and a general nihilism which cakes like dust any aspirations present.
An aesthetic which quickly rose to popularity during the last two years was Cottage Core. In essence, as an aesthetic it is composed of greenery and flowers surrounding a traditional cottage, with women dressed in a white modest dress taking care of the house, the plants, the washing up, the children. It truly is a return to a life which Gen Zers never experiencedâ and given the way in which our economic structure is heading, will never have the inherent right nor pleasure to experience.
This traditionalist aesthetic takes us back to the roots of what once was the foundation of the state (the family actually has existed long before the concept of the State, I would argue it is the foundation for building communities)â a nuclear family based on distinctive parental roles, a time when marriage was based on or rather seen desirable / the main goal of a marriage was to bare children and create a legacyâ offspring to whom you can pass down your faith, beliefs and nation. It brings with it a breath of neo-romanticism.
Such a fact carries with it a certain level of irony of course. The fact that the internet and technology are used to make and spread such images, is rather ironic given the fact that it is this very internet and technology which stripped this idyllic life away from us. Virtual citizens who have bloodshot eyes, social anxiety and an all around lack of will to persevere, find an escape in such aesthetics. This aesthetic comes part and parcel with an affinity for historical period dramas, a subconscious desire to leave the city and a longing for a family to nurture and raise.
As T. Howard interestingly noted, âthe aesthetic is self-consciously escapist and Cottage Core can be thought of as one of many expressive forms of post-Sexual Revolution trauma in the West.â.
The Covid-19 lockdowns led many Gen Zers to realise that with the leisure of open bars, theatres and clubs being taken away from the equation, the only thing which is left is the skeletal facade of a cityâ one which highlights so perfectly the metamorphosis of our decaying civilisation. What was left once such establishments were shut down? A reminder of the lives Gen Z were robbed off.
The seed of cultural Marxism has undoubtedly been sowed within the hem of the 21st century. This can be witnessed through the manifestation of Cancel Culture. Being a member of Gen Z automatically prevents you from being able to criticise the western social revolution of the 20th century (in the same way a black man or woman cannot criticise the BLM movement).
No matter how far Gen Z idealogues strive to stray away from what is natural, normal and traditional, in reality human nature and desires do not change. They are constant within the subconsciousâ no matter how hard the fight to push against them is. This is why the number of Gen Z anti-feminists is growing. Young women across the globe are realising what they lostâ or rather, what has been taken from them.
Feminism might have not been merely an organic movement which hoped to foster equality for all, but rather an orchestrated ploy by powerful men in order to reduce womenâs prospects of domestic fulfilment. Going to work and building a career is now seen as the ultimate form of self-liberation. Tell me, how can feminist groups look women in the eye and tell them they are better off as wage slaves, rather than as homemakers?
For the sake of clarification, I am in no way slandering women who work. If anything, they do not have a choice as our economy does not support such roles. However, I am criticising the fact that women can no longer stay at home and raise childrenâ a reality which only came about once women entered the workforce. Late capitalism delights as this; more labour, more production, more money.
Furthermore, women are thought to feel empowered by showing off their bodies in the quest to acquire more money. Is that really all we have to offer our young daughters? Real empowerment comes from perseverance, faith and modesty. Women have been stripped of their dignity and identity, to be replaced by gender theory which promotes the idea that any individual can be a womanâ regardless of anatomy.
This idea is further fuelled by the growing number of men who appropriate womanhood in their quest to âtransitionâ providing the world with a very sexist and misogynistic view of what womanhood really isâ reducing us to shopaholic hair obsessed women who care more about their clothes and nails than the future of their societies. How incredibly offensive it is to be a woman and be told that a biological man is just as much as a woman as you are.
With a growing interest in the traditionalâ even within the local context you see a revival of interest in Maltese traditional architecture, in folklore music and in cuisine, one is left to wonder whether or not this will manifest in a full fledged shift within the ideological attachments of Gen Z. The harvest is indeed plentiful, yet the labourers remain few.
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Richard Weaver: A Platonist in the Machine Age
âModern man is a moral idiot.â â Richard M. Weaver. 1948. Ideas Have Consequences.
The American cultural critic Richard Weaver (1910-1963) is unfortunately an obscure figure. However, I canât conceive a thinker whose message would be of greater interest or novelty for the contemporary world. Weaver bewails the decadence and hopelessness of the twentieth century as much as Oswald Spengler or Jose Ortega y Gasset. Yet his account of their causes is far more philosophical: his explanation of the âdissolution of the westâ is that it has abandoned its classical heritage.
For Weaver was a latter-day High Tory. A Platonist who thought ancient Greek mores were still alive among folk in the rural American south (his first work was on this very topic, see: The Southern Tradition at Bay). Already an oddity in the 1930s, he was the sort of conservative that has barely existed in the mainstream Anglophone world since the nineteenth century.
Weaverâs great work is Ideas Have Consequences, from 1948. It carries a single thesis from beginning to end. Europeâs mental decadence began at the close of the Middle Ages. It was then that the English churchman William of Ockham decided to abandon a doctrine almost universally held before him. A doctrine common to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. A doctrine believed by Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and pagans. This doctrine is realism.
This is my partial review and partial meditation on Weaver. His prose is vast, so I can only chew over a selection of what it covers. I shall focus on three issues which stand out to me: fragmentation, the spoiled child psychology, and what Weaver calls the âgreat stereopticonâ.
Realism is the view that abstract entities exist. For example, if I see the sun, a basketball, and a balloon, and call these all âspheresâ, that word âsphereâ refers to something separate from my mind. When I say, âAll these things are sphericalâ, that term âsphericalâ describes a real feature of how the world truly is.
It was the widespread opinion of ancient and medieval people that such concepts as ârednessâ, âroundnessâ, âcatnessâ and âhumanityâ were the basic building blocks of reality. These were the patterns that individual things conformed to, to make them what they are. Each one acts like the blueprint for a building. In the same way a pile of bricks isnât a dome unless it has roundness, a pile of bones and organs isnât a dog unless it has âdognessâ. That is, unless it conforms to the pattern of an idealised dog.
Realism then allows for nature to have a sort of duty inherent to it. For, if to be a dog is to conform to the pattern of an ideal dog, then this pattern is what dogs should be. A dog that doesnât eat meat, doesnât play fetch, and doesnât wag his tail fails to be a proper dog; and so, we call it a âbadâ dog. Likewise, to be human is to embody the ideal pattern of âhumanityâ. Good people embody it better, and bad people embody it less.
This means morality is a simple movement from how we are to how we ought to be if we fulfilled our ideal. Beings come into the world imperfect. They only arrive at their proper pattern through hard training and discipline. Moral rules like âdonât stealâ and âdonât lieâ are guides to help us get from one point to the other by telling us what being an ideal human consists of. Just like âeat meatâ, âplay fetchâ and âwag your tailâ, are commands telling the dog how to be a proper dog. This understanding is what, for example, informs Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius insists that the good man is virtuous regardless of what others do or say to him. Because his goodness consists of fulfilling an ideal pattern of conduct, which doesnât change with the words or actions of others.
What if we deny all this though? What if, like William of Ockham, we declare this all superstition, and say general terms only refer to our own thoughts? This would make us nominalists, a word derived from the Latin nomen meaning ânameâ. Weâd be saying abstract terms are mere names in the mind; conventions for grouping things together, which truly have nothing in common. This is where Weaver is true to his name and weaves us the consequences.
First, nature goes from how things should be to how things just are. Without ideals for things to aspire to, it becomes impossible to talk of imperfection. If thereâs no ideal dog, for example, then thereâs no such thing as a deficient dog. Dogs come in many shapes and sizes, some eat meat and live to fourteen, others never eat, and they die at one. But all are equally natural and morally neutral.
Applied to people, this causes the death of virtue. For, without an ideal human personality type, all our instincts, inclinations and desires also become morally neutral. Nature produces some people with an extreme hunger, and others with almost none. The human mind and body go from something that must be cultivated to meet an ideal, to a machine that runs on automatic. Passions just happen and calling them flawed now seems ridiculous. Weaver writes, âIf physical nature is the totality and if man is of nature, it is impossible to think of him as suffering from constitutional evilâ.
Fragmentation results from the loss of an ideal to hold knowledge together. For, where the ideal concept of a thing is lost, thereâs no one principle to explain its parts. The blueprint of a house, once in my mind, makes everything about it understandable at a glance. But without the blueprint, the atrium, room, and corridor lose all meaning (imagine explaining what a corridor is to someone without any notion of a house and what it should look like). Since, from the realist perspective, the ideal is what determines knowledge, the long-term consequence cannot be but the elimination of truth.
As Weaver then says, modern man, âHaving been told by the relativists that he cannot have truth, (âŠ) now has “facts.”â Gentlemen of the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, he notes, had a broad humanistic knowledge. They had it because they were schooled in a classical worldview. The gentleman of Ancien Regime Europe sought not pedantic obsession, but to know how ideals relate to each other. So he was like an architect, having the whole plan of the building before him. He could then inform the more expert workmen how best to make this plan a reality.
The gentleman has been gradually replaced by the specialised technocrat as the ruler of western societies. Every field (biology, economics, architecture, etc.) becomes isolated from the rest, and presents itself as the unique solution to all problems. Those who practice them, the technocrats, are each busy making the world in the image of their chosen subjects. The technocrat asks neither why, nor wherefore, but only how. This is, for Weaver, the âsubstitution of means for endsâ. Since, having lost the plan which gives purpose to learning, the tool now becomes the aim. Statecraft becomes a competition between obsessives, who each advance only their own segregated hobbies because they no longer serve human nature.
Modern man is a âspoiled childâ according to Weaver. The path to this is indirect, but obvious when seen. Once ideals are denied, everything that seems fixed and permanent becomes liquid. The cosmos is a machine which we can take apart and reassemble to our own fancy. A cat, for example, isnât a natural type which ought to have four legs, meow, eat meat, etc. Itâs a pile of flesh and bones just so arranged into cat-like shape. We can therefore change it as we see fit. And since humans ourselves have no ideal pattern to conform to, what we see fit is anything whatsoever. This is what Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, sets out to do when he says nature should âbe put on the rackâ, for our benefit.
Our own goodness, in other words, has come apart from any natural limit. This means goodness is now limitless pleasure (pleasure being the only thing remaining when all purpose is removed from nature). So, man becomes a âspoiled childâ because he demands the fabric of reality itself be bent to his delight. Science goes from the quest for wisdom to the slave of indulgence. Progress now means destroying whatever stands in the way of comfort and convenience. The masses get used to thinking of nature not as what exists, but as an enemy that must be overcome. Rights without duties are the inevitable result.
Here Weaver, the abstract metaphysician, makes a practical point. The spoiled child endlessly consumes, because he sees no limit to his pleasure, and appetites grow with the feeding. Yet production means enduring discomfort for the sake of an end, and hedonists are averse to this. The hardest worker is the person who believes work improves him; the one who thinks the human ideal is fulfilled by work. But âThe more [modern man] is spoiled, the more he resents control, and thus he actually defeats the measures which would make possible a greater consumptionâ.
Nominalism is the philosophy of consumption, but realism is the philosophy of production. A nominalist culture thus runs the risk of collapse through idleness.
A stereopticon, or stereoscope, is an old-fashioned machine used to look at three-dimensional stereoscopic images; the ancestor of 3D glasses. Weaver likens mass media in nominalist societies to a stereopticon because its aim is to maintain an illusion. For, Weaver thinks, the above modern project of specialisation, hedonism, and progress at all costs is fated to fail. If ideal concepts truly exist outside the mind, then all attempts to ignore them will end badly. They shall re-assert themselves at every attempt to destroy them, and thwart whatever projects are built on their denial.
As the ideal drops out, society fragments into myriad groups with incompatible perspectives. Like the blind men in the Buddhist proverb, each one touches the elephant and calls it a different animal. The biologist, the head of a social club, the accountant, and engineer; each fails to see the higher truth that unites his vision with the rest. Modern states face, then, the problem of getting these specialised obsessives to agree to a common action or set of beliefs. Thus, it presses mass media for this purpose. Radio, cinema, and television spin a narrative where endless consumption makes people happy, and progress is irresistible and unrelenting. Journalists and directors adopt a single âunvarying answerâ to the meaning of life: pleasure, aided by technology and consumption.
Weaver believes the effect is to re-create Platoâs cave through media. The prisoners, chained in a cave, are forced to watch the parade before them: vapid film stars, gung-ho newsreels, advertisements for cars and coffee makers. They are spiritually and mentally starved yet believe the cure to their trouble is the shallow, materialistic life portrayed on the cave wall. This is not grand conspiracy according to Weaver. Rather, a society with such bloodless aspirations is forced to use propaganda. The unhappiness it causes would otherwise be too obvious for people to bear: âThey [media] are protecting a materialist civilization growing more insecure and panicky as awareness filters through that it is over an abyss.â
Such a propagandised civilisation, our author warns, will suffer cyclic authoritarian spasms. Conditioned to think progress is relentless, modern man â⊠is being prepared for that disillusionment and resentment which lay behind the mass psychosis of fascism.â Long gone are the gentlemen who could move us from how we are, to how we ought to be, if we fulfilled our ideal. When the stereopticon fails, the public looks to anybody who can impose duties on them. These tend to be thugs fed on the same materialism as everyone else.
In conclusion, Weaver paints a picture of a culture undergoing a long, agonising death, yet clinging to the fantasy of its own life. Societies whose false idols are failing cope like a balding man whose hairs retreat ever more. He compensates with a combover until thereâs nothing left to comb. Nominalism creates a contradictory culture. Glorifying pleasure, it expects heroism. Fragmenting the sciences, it expects wisdom. Destroying a common ideal, it expects its citizens to form a common front.
The treatment is polemical, and not a replacement for reading philosophers themselves. As a Platonist, Weaver unnecessarily denigrates Aristotle at times, blaming him for the decline of the medieval worldview. Yet some authors of similar politics to Weaver (like Heinrich Rommen or Edward Feser) would dispute this. He also glosses over Enlightenment projects like those of Rousseau and Kant without much analysis (Charles N. R. McCoy criticises them in much more satisfying detail). But for one wanting an overview of how a single wrong turn can doom a whole culture, Weaverâs clarity is unparalleled. His work is especially good as a locus classicus, with which to compare current trends against. Seldom, in my reading, do I find Weaver has nothing to say on a given topic.
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Against the Rationalists
I had forgotten why I wrote ‘Against the Traditionalists’, and what it meant, so the following is an attempted self-interpretation; for that purpose, they are intended to be read together.
The Preface of Inquiry:
God hath broke a motley spear upon the lines of Rome,
When brothers Hermes masked afront Apolloâs golden throne.
The Aesthetics of Inquiry:
Metaphors we hold in mind, those scenes with their images and progressions, are of the fundamental sense that orders our perceptions and beliefs, and from which everything we create is sourced; for metaphors are dynamic and intuitive relations; and they emerge from the logic of the imaginationâlet us have faith that our logic is not cursed and disordered, in its severance from the Logos. The phenomenologists would be amply quoted here if they weren’t so mystical and confusedâalas, one can never know which of the philosophers to settle with as they’re all so sensible, and they can never agree amongst themselves, forming warring schools that err to dogmatism since initiationâso it is to no surprise that ideologies are perused and possessed as garbs regalia, and for every man, their emperor’s new clothes.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then genius is the abbreviation of methodologies. Find the right method of inquiry, for the right moment: avoiding circumstantial particulars, preferring particular universals; even epistemic anarchist, Feyerabend, would prefer limited, periodical design to persistent, oceanic noise. One zetetic tool of threefold design, for your consideration, might be constituted thusly: axiomatic logisticsâParmenides’ Ladder, founded, stacked and climbed, with repeated steps that hold all the way; forensic tacticsâPoe’s Purloined Letter, ontologically abstracted over to compare more general criteria; panoramic strategyâpuzzling walnuts submerged and dissolved in Grothendieck’s Rising Sea, objects awash with the accumulated molecules of a general abstract theory. Yet, do not only stick your eye to tools, lest you become all technique, for art, in Borges, is but algebra, without its fire; and let not poor constructs be ready at hand, for the coming forth a temple-work, in Heidegger, sets up the world, while material perishes to equipment, and equipment to its singular use.
Letters of Fire and Sword:
A gallery of all sorts of shapes, and symbolic movements, exist naturally in cognition and language, and such a gallery has it’s typical formsâthe line and circle, for example, are included in every shape-enthusiast’s favouritesâthough Frye identifies more complex images on offer, such as mountains, gardens, furnaces, and cavesâand, most unforgettably, the crucifix of Jesus Christ. I’d write of the unique flavours of languages, such as their tendency to particular genres, to Sapir and Whorf’s pleasure, yet by method I must complete my first definitionânow from shapes, their movement. The cinematographic plot of pleasing images adds another dimension to their enjoymentâmoving metaphors, narrative poetry, being the most poetic; their popular display is sadly limited to mainly the thesislike development of a single heroic journey, less so the ambitious spiral scendancy, or, in the tendency of yours truly and Matt Groening, disjointed and ethereally timestuck episodes in a plain, imaginary void. The most beautiful scenes, often excluded, are a birth and rejoice, the catharsis of recognition, and the befalling ultimate tragedy and its revelation to universal comedyâthese stories hold an aesthetic appeal for all audiences, and that’s a golden ticket for us storytellers.
If memory is the treasurehouse of the mind, then good literature is food for the soul. In the name of orthomolecular medicine, with the hopes that exercise and sleep are already accounted for, let your pantry be amply stocked and restocked with the usual bread and milk, with confectionary that’s disappeared afore next day, and with canned foods that seem forever to have existedâas for raw honey, a rarer purchase, when stored right it lasts a lifetime, and eversweet. I’m no stranger to the warnings against polyunsaturated fats by fringe health gurus, but I think I’ll take my recommendations from the more erudite masters of such matters; and I’m no stranger to new and unusual flavours, provided they’re not eaten to excess. The canonical food pyramid of Western medicine, in its anatomical display of appropriate portions, developed from extensive study and historical data, places the hearty reliables en masse at its foundations, and the unhealthiest consumables at the tiniest peak, so that we might be fully nourished and completed, while spared of the damage wreaked on our bodily constitution by sly treats of excess fats, sugars, and salt. Be rid of these nasty invaders, I say, that’d inflame with all sorts of disease; be full of good food, I say, that’d sharpen the body’s workers to good form. Mark the appropriateness of time and place when eating to the same measure; a diet is incomplete without fastingâlet your gut some space to rest and think. And note the insufficiency of paper and ink as foodstuffs, and the immorality of treating friends like fast foodâthe sensibility of a metaphor must be conducive to The Good as well as The Beautiful, if it is to be akin to The True. Aside, it is the most miserable tragedy that, for all the meaty mindpower of medieval transcendental philosophy, they did not explore The Funnyâfor the Gospels end in good news, as does good comedy.
Bottom’s Dream:
ShakespeareâThe Bard of whom, I confess, all I write is imitation of, for the simple fact I write in Englishâdeserving, him not I, of all the haughtiest epithets and sobriquets that’d fall short of godhood, writes so beautifully of dreams in Midsummer’s Night’s, and yet even he could not do them justice when speaking through his Bottomâha ha ha, delightful. âI have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I wasâthere is no man who can tell what. Methought I was, âand methought I had, âbut man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom…â, Nick Bottom, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the end of Act IV, Scene 1.
Intermission, The Royal Zoo:
A Prince and three Lords did walk in the garden, and they sauntered about for the day.
The soon-to-be-King became awfully bored and inquired what game they could play.
âPerhaps, Sire, itâd be best to prepareâ, they said, âfor lifeâs duties that approachâ.
âIt is proper to train for a lifeâs workâ, said they, âlest that debtsâ hunger encroachâ.
âConsider the ratsâ, said the Money Lord, âhow they scavenge and thrift for tomorrowâ.
âFor their wild life is grim, and tomorrowâs tomorrow, so take what you can, and borrowâ.
âConsider the lionsâ, said the Warrior Lord, âhow they prowl and sneak for a biteâ.
âFor the proud life is hearty, strong conquers weak, lamb shanks easiest sliced at nightâ.
âWise, yet consider the spidersâ, said the Scribe Lord, âfor they outwit both lion and ratâ.
âTo scavenge is dirty and timely, and hunting so tiring, better cunning employed to entrapâ.
The Prince, unsatisfied by his Lords, summoned a Squire to ask of him his opinion:
âSquire, what do you do, not yet enslaved by your profession, that maketh life fulfilling?â.
âI play with whom I play, and with whom I play are my neighbours, my friendsâ, said Squire.
For that, said The Prince, âI will live not like a beastâ, âI will live like a man!â,
And three Lords became three furnaced in fire.
âThen I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.â, Ecclesiastes 8:15, KJV. Amen.
The headstar by which we navigate, fellow Christians, is neither Athens nor Romeâit is Christ. âBe sure [Be careful; Watch; See] that no one ·leads you away [takes you captive; captivates you] with ·false [deceptive] and ·empty [worthless] teaching that is ·only human [according to human traditions], which comes from the ·ruling spirits [elemental spiritual forces (demons); or elementary teachings] of this world, and not from Christ.â, Colossians 2:8, EXB. Amen.
A Note on Opinion:
It is common sense, in our current times, that the most opinionated of us rule popular culture. Without a doubt, the casting, writing, directing, etc, of a major cinematic production project is decided in final cut by âthe moneyââso I speak not of the centrally-planned, market-compromised popular-media environmentâbut it is by the algorithm of the polemic dogmatist that metacultural opinions, of normative selection and ranking and structuring, are selected. One must be at the very least genius, or prideful, or insane, to have the character of spontaneously spouting opinions. It is an elusive, but firmly remembered anecdote that ordinary, healthy people are not politics-madâideologically lukewarm, at the very least. Consider the archetypical niche internet micro-celebrity: such posters are indifferent machines, accounts that express as autonomous idols, posting consistently the same branded factory gruel, and defended by their para-socialised followers over any faux pas, for providing the dry ground of profilicity when sailing the information sea. Idols’ dry land at sea, I say, are still but desert islandsâhouses built on sand. Now consider the archetypical subreddit: ignoring the top-ranking post of all time either satirising or politicising the subreddit, and the internal memes about happenings within the subreddit; even without the influence of marketing bots, the group produces opinions and norms over commercial products and expensive hobbies, and there is much shaming to new members who have not yet imitated and adopted group customs; essentially, they’re product-review-based fashion communities. Hence, the question follows: if knowledge is socially produced, then how can we distinguish between fashion and beautyâthat is, in effect, the same as asking how, in trusting our gut, can we distinguish lust and love? How can we recognise a stranger? Concerning absolute knowledge, including matters of virtue and identity, truth is not pursued through passion’s inquiry, but divinely revealed. âJesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.â, John 8:58, KJV. Amen.
A Note on Insanity:
It is common for romantic idealists to be as dogmatic as the harsh materialists they so criticise. All is matter! All is mind! One ought to read Kant methinks; recall Blake’s call to particularity: there needs be exceptions, clarifications, addendums, subclauses, minor provisions, explanatory notes, analytical commentary, critique, and reviewsâorbiting companion to bold aphorism; Saturn’s ordered rings, to monocle Jupiter’s vortex eye, met in Neptuneâs subtle glide. Otherwise, the frame is no other than that which is criticised: arch-dogmatism. If we’re to play, then let us play nicely; it is not for no reason that Plato so criticised the poets, for the plain assertions of verse do not explain themselves, and so are contrarywise to the pursuit of wisdom in a simple and subjectivist prideâselfishly asserting its rules as self-evident. Yet, they might be wedded, for truly there is no poetic profession without argumentative criticsâno dialectic without dialogue. And so, if I must think well, and to accept those necessities, then questions of agency be most exhaustive nuts to crack. If all is matter, then all is circumstantialâIf all is mind, then all is your fault; if all is reason, we’re bound by Urizen’s bronzeâif all is passion, we’re windswept to fancy. Unanswered still, is the question of insanity. And even without insanity, what is right and what is wrong so eludes our wordy description. âSo whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.â, James 4:17, KJV. Amen.
Endless curiosities might unravel onwards, so shortly I shall suggest a linguistic idealist metacritique of mine own, that: to make philosophy idealistic, or to naturalise the same, are but one common movement, merging disparate literatures representing minds, of the approach to total coherence of the human imagination; such that might mirror the modal actualism of Hegel, a novelist who was in following, and ahead of, the boundless footsteps of short story writer, Leibniz. To answer it most simply: for four Gospels, we have fourfold vision, so if one vision is insufficient, then two perspectives are tooâall-binary contradiction is the workings of Hell, but paradox and aporia, is, as exposited by Nicholas Rescher and Brayton Polka, the truth of reality. This way we might properly weigh both agency and insanity, by taking the higher ground of knowledge and learning. Recall Jesus’ perfect meeting of the adultererâwhen he saw the subject and not the sin.
A Note on Disability:
There is potential for profound beauty in the inexpressible imagination, such that would make language but ugly nuts and bolts, if it didn’t also follow that we cannot absolutely explicate language either. Then, it seems even if our words do not create the world, but are representations, we can still know and appreciate facets of reality without their full expressionâour words construct models, or carve at the joints of the world, but the good and beautiful expression is true proof of God; to recognise truth is intuitive, perhaps being that mental faculty which is measure sensibility. Hence, let us first pray that we are all forgiven for our sins, ignorant and willing, and second, that the mentally disabled, and lost lambs without dreams, can know Him too. Amen.
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How to Deal with an Ideological Villain
A pet peeve of mine is when an antagonist in a book, show, or movie is driven by an ideology that, when he or she is inevitably defeated, nonetheless remains without being dismantled or rendered inept in some way. While, today, it is more often the protagonist driven by his or her writerâs self-inserted worldview, antagonists have, for over a century, often had ideological motivationsâsaving the climate, achieving some form of racial or sexual (but never ideological) equity, promoting radical resource conservation, whatever. Of course, we keep our hands clean by having the villain nominally lose, but that still leaves the ideology to be dealt with.
If left unanswered, the antagonistâs scheme, though foiled in its dastardly implementation, can too easily become a case of a merely overzealous attempt to produce what some believe to be a nonetheless good, noble goal with whatever hue of progressivism initially drove him or her. The good and the bad becomes, thus, not a matter of principle or goal but of methodâthe villain or villainess was such because he or she was too radical for those around him or her, etc. Hence, you get people considering whether the Marvel Universeâs Thanos was right in trying to reduce planetary populations by half, whether it wouldnât be just for Godzilla: King of the Monstersâs Dr. Emma Russel to accelerate some a titanic climate emergency to fully dispense with humanity, or whether X-Menâs Magnetoâs openly violent revolution for minority-mutant acceptance wouldnât be justifiedâif not just a little satisfying.
Of course, the author who led the way with dealing with explicitly ideological villains was Dostoevsky, who reached his zenith of popularity, not to mention innovation, by dismantling Turgenevâs and Chernyshevskyâs ideological heroes. He did this often through mockery but predominantly through exposing to light of their ideologies through his antagonists who share them. Let us attend: the twoâexposure and mockeryâcan and arguably should go hand-in-hand.
Dostoevsky made it his M.O. to resolve his charactersâ conflicts by showing why their motivations are as bad as (or worse than) the attempted implementation. However, there was another writer, up to whom Dostoevsky looked, who was already doing this in England before Dostoevsky hit the Russian literary scene. I am, of course, talking about Charles Dickens.
No reader of Dickens can miss his criticism of the perspectives and politics of his day, be it open scorn, mocking satire, or earnest plea. While not all of his villains recant their ideas, one of his most complete cases of repentance is also one of his most popular tales, especially come Yuletide. This is none other than A Christmas Carol.
Now, readers will not need me to review the plot of Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name has become synonymous with Christmas in the English-speaking world. However, I nonetheless want to briefly examine points in Scroogeâs arc to see how it is not only his avarice but also the then popular ideology that justified it that is defeated in the end. Dickens pretty handily sets up the contemporary pop philosophy that gilds Scroogeâs greed. Rejecting personal charity for the impersonal, tax-funded state institutions of ââprisonsâŠUnion workhousesâŠthe Treadmill and the Poor Law,ââ he identifies himself in the first scene as a Social Darwinist and Malthusian Utilitarian. ââChristian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,ââ as one of the sceneâs collectors of charity puts it? Bahâhumbug! ââI help to support the establishments I have mentioned,ââ he says, ââthey cost enough; and those that are badly off must go thereâŠIf they would rather dieâŠthey had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.ââ In Scrooge, Dickens concretises the worst versions of the ideologies gaining popularity as an increasingly rationalistic society dispensed with Christian superstitions of Godâs image in each individual, and with them the Christian ethics behind giving of oneâs own to the poor.
Of course, Dickens includes us in the dramatic irony that Scroogeâs integrity is neither admirable nor monstrous (yet), but pitiable and foolish. The former is articulated when, drawn through key moments of his past by the Ghost of Christmases thereofâhis lonely Christmases as a child, his little sister who would leave behind his supposedly foolish nephew, his erstwhile love for the Christmas season at Old Fezziwigâs regardless of its cost in âmortal moneyââScrooge is reminded of how spectacularly he fumbled the bag with his fiancĂ©e Belle by grasping a different bag too tightly. The enlightened self-righteousness of Scroogeâs post-Christian ethic is neither as internally consistent nor as impressive as its holder might try to maintain: juxtaposing Scroogeâs excited apology for Fezziwigâs party in spite of himself with an unwillingness to look on the greed that would lead to his present loneliness, Dickens makes clear that Scroogeâs ideological righteousness covers a deeply buried sense of failure, regret, and betrayal of the best aspects of his past self. The scene shakes Scroogeâs supposedly staid principles, and his explicit and implicit admissions that gold is not the be-all, end-all valuer of life serve to begin his reformation.
Having shown why Scrooge is to be pitied for his Malthusian views (which he may not even fully hold), Dickens progresses to show Scrooge that he has also been unnecessarily foolish to hold them. Satisfying the first sceneâs foreshadowing, this foolishness is shown when the Ghost of Christmas Present gives us more of his nephew, Fred.
Hard on the heels of shaming Scrooge with the mistreated Bob Cratchitâs nonetheless toasting him, the second Ghost presents Fredâs dinner party, sans uncle. Whereas Cratchit politely rebuffed his wifeâs insults to Scrooge, Fred does the same to his wifeâs with jollity. ââHis wealth is of no use to him. He doesnât do any good with it.ââ When his wife says, ââI have no patience with him,ââ Fred returns:
ââOh, I have!âŠI am sorry for him: I couldnât be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, alwaysâŠ[The] consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, thatâŠhe loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him.ââ
The girls mock the idea of Scroogeâs ever taking Fred up on that chance. However, unbeknownst to them, their mock unknowingly digs the knife of change further into the invisible uncleânot by disclaiming the immorality of his avarice (which might harden him), but by showing how foolish he is to maintain his proud isolation in it.
And the fact is that Scrooge would much rather be with them. In spite of himself, he tries his invisible darnedest to play along with the groupâs games, which leads him, unsuspectingly, into being the butt of the nightâs climactic joke. Having already shown Scrooge the ineffectuality of his gold and spite, Dickens meets both not with other charactersâ argument but with mockery. Little wonder that the later Dostoevsky, who would mock his characters while showing the disastrous real-world consequences of their ideas, counted Dickens as one of his primary influences.
And yet, Dickens does not risk leaving things there, for one manâs pitiable past and foolish present might not undermine an entire ideology, even to the man himself. Before he leaves, the second Ghost reveals to Scrooge the true nature of his ideasâin the forms of the emaciated siblings, Ignorance and Want, hidden beneath his heretofore abundant cloak. ââScrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.ââ Pushed to choose between the utilitarian phrases of his ideology and his own human sympathy, Scrooge ultimately cannot utter the former.
Readers donât need me to review Scroogeâs interview with the third Ghost. Suffice it to say, his initial viewpoint, if followed through, will land him little posthumous respect among the living, even those who nominally venerate the old skinflint. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, with none to care for his affairs, Scroogeâs possessions will land in the hands of petty thievesâwho, as a last insult to his way of life, parody him in their penny pinching over his personal effects. In death, he is treated according to the utilitarian ideology he espoused in life.
Now, several moments in A Christmas Carol are, without a doubt, moralistic and even a bit preachy in dealing with Scroogeâs ideology (example, the two waifs, above), and can, thus, arguably be skipped in retellings or depictions without the storyâsâor Scroogeâs humblingâsâlosing much weight. As I have previously written on the story, the falling away of such excesses, bound as they are to ideas and issues contemporary to its writing, is the beginning of a workâs usefulness as art. That so much of A Christmas Carol remains despite its initial polemic speaks to Dickensâs ability to make a point without its feeling like he is doing so.
And yet, his depiction of Social Darwinism remains relevantânot the least because Scroogeâs hardnosed display foreshadows those in our own day who promote state redistribution schemes while foregoing personal charity, yet somehow still thinking themselves moral and on the side of the poor. Furthermore, current progressive ideologies often take on the same self-satisfied tone, even glee, as Scrooge at the supposedly justified handicap or destruction (always their fault) of the designated outgroupâwhite men, âthe rich,â landlords, heteronormative family units, groups indigenous to European lands, etc. Their hijacking every medium they can for the sake not of creating good art but of spreading âThe Messageâ has left a dearth of art and stories that seek not only to include the majority of audiences but also to simply be good for their own sake. The question among conservative creators (which, as I argue in the above linked article, not to mention my novel, includes many more than those who consider or label themselves conservative) of how to create the best art can and should point us to authors like Dickens and Dostoevsky.
While politics was not the point for such authors, they did not shy away from dealing with insidious ideas of their day. The difference between them and authors who see art as inherently political was and should be that, in treating art as a function of greater things than politicsânot to mention weighing it against human experience and traditionâthey exposed inhuman ideas fully in the lives of their characters. Such a thing necessarily leads, as can be seen in A Christmas Carol, towards at least some charactersâ repenting of their ideology towards a more wholistically human ethic that balances personal rights and interests with duties and responsibilities for othersâone I would argue is best found in the Christian view of man and its subsequent moral tradition, articulated implicitly in Dickens and explicitly in Dostoevsky.
Like many pre-20th-century books, A Christmas Carol is refreshing, if nothing else because its lesson is for its protagonist (who is also its antagonist), not its readers, who are included in the joke. However, even thus reducing it to a âlessonâ is to render it as inhumanly provincial as is the pre-repentance Scrooge. We should look to older literature not just to nostalgically escape the present (though thatâs often a necessary salve), nor to learn how to âretvrnâ to a time before all the other advancements our culture has made (on the backs of the previous centuriesâ literature and ethics, one should add). We should do so because older books have survived the changing of times.
Said survival is not, as Marxist progressives claim, because their popularity has been artificially and oppressively maintained in various social traditions and structures (though one manâs supposedly oppressive structure might be many other menâs most efficient means of justly and safely ordering society). Rather, it is because their authors concretised elements of human life that are and will remain immutably true. That, of course, can have implicit ideological or political (etc.) ramifications, but such accidental effects are not their core substance. Watching a rendition of A Christmas Carol to get into the Christmas spirit might have the effects of motivating us to give to the less fortunate or to look, Cratchit-like, with forgiveness on even the most oppressive of our fellow men (or on ourselves, as Scrooge, himself, learns to do). However, to see this kind of thing as inherently political or ideological is, itself, to maintain an ideology about the relationship between art, actual people, and each other that would reduce all three. Thankfully, should we want to dismantle such a thing, we know where to look.
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