Being of mature years, never occupying a strata beyond the ordinary, but having lived and seen a thing or two, I find your daydream realistic in concept and hopeful in outcome. For everything there is the pro and con, and being human-natured we make frequent use of both in our time here on the temporal plane. Conservatism is the innate understanding that utopia is an illusion that never materializes into heaven on earth. Hell is its inevitable outcome, yet conservatism needs the counterbalance of liberalism, and vise versa. Finding the balance is the hard part.
‘The dominant market is for commentary (and venting) on the current here-and-now of Progressivism’s social and political folly. ‘
You got me Graham!
Great essay. It’s a cliché, but I learned more about politics, the siren seductive pull of authoritarianism, the nature of language, and the power of propaganda from one Orwell novel than from all the non fiction commentary I have ever read on those topics.
And the stand up comedy of Bill Hicks taught me to be cynical and sceptical about all of it.
LSO is in another niche it seems to me (although perhaps a bigger one than mine)....keeping perspective on all the political folly via a sense of humour. I always enjoy your posts anyway.
I’ve come to the realization that just trying to monitor, much less manage, the current firehose in news & information is more than a full time job. Can’t / don’t want to ignore it, but don’t know how to deal with it effectively, either.
Your excellent, thought provoking post is the kind of thing I don’t want to miss, but l was lucky it caught my attention.
It would be nice if there was someone I could trust to curate what I’m interested in, but that can lead to another can of worms.
I still read a lot, mostly fiction; I have a list of books on political theory that I plan to read, but, like you, I seldom get even half way through, maybe it’s the writing, and not me.
The more we attempt to "keep up" the less we will be able to actually live and meet our true obligations to family, church, friends, community. How much do we really need to know to live productive and fulfilling lives? Much less than we have been led to believe, I think.
The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on - Omar Khayyam.
Classic Liberalism (as practiced by Thomas Jefferson and John Wayne) allows for the exploration of opposing views and the consideration of benefits and unintended consequences. Our so-called modern civilization (a.k.a. Medieval Islamic hate in open conflict with the West) is a product of liberalism that fell off the tracks when Madelyn Murray O'Hare ruined public education. The Tao is constantly in motion. You can feel it in the air.
"...the essence of Progressivism is that it is a juvenile mentality of upsides with no downsides.....a permanent have-your-cake-and-eat-it arrested adulthood." Great line. Keep in mind this is also the byproduct of commercial marketing for Big Tech: the NEXT, newer, latest version of the software, hardware, whatever, is the BEST! Newer is always somehow better! The next, always the next, keep buying, keep upgrading constantly, so that they continue narrowing the window in which the current is supported. So even the NOW is being continually erased. No wonder people are confused and retreat into a mental stew composed of equal parts fact, fantasy and misinformation.
The so-called "vibe shift" is the increasingly mainstream recognition that "maximal individual autonomy'" can't sustain a culture. There's broad acknowledgement that society needs to chare something beyond: do as thou wilt (as long as no one else gets hurt.) But we've no idea what that should be. So until I see someone propose an alternative to John Stuart Mill, I wouldn't be celebrating the demise of liberalism.
Literature as a window into the political strikes me as accurate. I tell my civics students that Karl Marx and Charles Dickens were both writing about the exploitation of early industrial capitalism in Britain. But a whole lot more people have read Oliver Twist than Das Kapital. Another good example is Anna Sewell's Black Beauty -- she essentially created the modern view of horses with a single anthropomorphized book.
That is a profound insight to have conveyed to your students about Marx vs. Dickens. Good thinking!
But I hope you then followed up with an assignment to read some Hayek or Milton Freedman, so they could also grasp the errors of Marx vs. the real history of the proletariat as the industrial age "progressed". Jon Haidt suggests our reason is often employed in service of justifying our emotions, but I would hope sometimes reason can then extend and augment our understanding, even if/when "primed" by the intensity of feelings.
As I age I realize more the need for self-discipline, whether it is getting in daily exercise or interrupting daily routine with wasting time in boredom. I love attempting a little poetry and painting. But the digital world in substack offers a good variety of analysis and information that is so much better than MSM etc. I find your expression "anyone who manages to maintain a balance between intellectual curiosity and scepticism" fits me perfectly.
8am Mass this morning, I’m a returning Catholic. My wife won’t come due to the Mary thing so worship again w/ her at 11am Evangelical service. I can’t do this life without God. Saw your post Graham and thought I better listen to Dire Straits ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ on ride home before I read something that is going to be deep and good, which I did, and is. Then read your post while enjoying a listen to ‘Telegraph Road’ which was a musical companion to part of your thesis — that today’s online dopamine-hitting tech is tattering (replacing) the fireside chat as the age-old baton passing on - of right and wrong into one’s bones. The rise and fall of civilizations, the impacts of industrialization and tech upon the individual and community. Now, how do we keep AI written novels at arms-length? You know, those words that will come from an entity that never experienced a 1st kiss, heartbreak of gaining, then losing love, who never held a baby in its arms…
“A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
“News’ about the world beyond one’s immediate, intimate environment was scarce leaving plenty of head-space for other ways of viewing reality. “
I want to agree with everything in this excellent essay. But…
The internet and social media even more so make everything local in a way, and that to me explains more about the hopelessness eating at younger generations than older parents and single children.
The decline and almost absence of reading, especially long form, in younger people does not make me optimistic either. The culture is becoming more and more visual and mimetic, without self reflection as the author notes.
The shifting obsessions of the woke (climate, racism, trans, Palestine, billionaires etc.) will continue latching on new and more destructive moral panics because their worldview is entirely post-modern (oppressed vs. oppressor) and offers no description of the world that aligns with reality, creating a self replicating form of malaise and morosity.
The fragmentation of information makes it that much harder to correct and find common bonds with neighbors.
In circa 2018 Anne-Marie Waters put a call out. For people to write about their vision of what the UK would be like in the yeaar 2050. Here is my short story, "Hellish 2050".
From that beginning came a book of the same name, a website of the same name, and now a Substack of the same name.
Koran 9:5 Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush...
Who is it that decides whether someone is an idolater? It is he who has the biggest weapon, of course.
Three weeks ago the Behemoth class submarine, HMS Barak slipped quietly down the Clyde, to play a crucial role in a pre-planned attack. The officer in charge is Captain Omar Rogers. He has been chosen for this mission due to his single-mindedness, his loyalty to the Northern Caliphate, and his grasp of the True Theology. Although other officers were considered for this special mission, none gave such assurance that they would complete the task as Captain Rogers had. Nevertheless, as an additional insurance, also on board is Faith Enforcement Commissar Mohammed Hardy and his contingent of Faith Enforcement Police. Just in case the captain developed any doubts during the execution of the mission.
Faith Enforcement Commissar Hardy, Captain Rogers and most of the officers and crew are of white European parentage. They are all, every one of them, True Believers.
Night has fallen over the Arabian Sea. The date is 4th Safar 1473 AH or by the cursed infidel calendar, it is 21st October 2050. Traditionally Safar is the month in which the houses of the enemy are looted. It is not a sacred month.
I too have made a few attempts at fiction. In my dreams, to be a good novellist would be a greater achievement than a good essayist but I have had to accept that it is not in me. I am what I call a Big Picture writer (and a good one I am vain enough to say) but to be a good novellist is about noticing (and retaining a memory of) life's myriad little details.....how people look, how they move, things they say etc etc etc.
Thanks again fro the links which I will look at sometime soon.
Graham, this is a thought-provoking article, thank you.
I have now subscribed to your Substack.
Did you ever read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"? There was the tragedy, it described, of a Greek warrior. He was not so much concerned about his own death in battle, as much as the idea that if he failed, his wife and child would be taken into slavery.
I have a similar feeling regarding the impending collapse of the UK in particular, and Western civilisation in general. We have to admit it now, there is no use pretending. The rose tinted spectacles must be discarded. The naive wishful thinking, and hope that there exists a "moderate Islam" must be ditched. Without urgent and concerted effort, right now, then the UK WILL become Islamic. Within relatively few decades.
For my own sake, I am not overly concerned. Maybe I only have one or two decades remaining anyway. But it is for the sake of my young relatives that I persevere. I do not wish for them to live as subjugated dhimmis under the jackboot of Islam. We have 10 years, 15 years maximum, before "the point of no return". The advance of Islam must be halted and reversed this decade, or it is goodbye to the UK.
And here are the fruits of my labours: over 20 books on the topic of Islam and its evils. I am trying to get them to a wider audience now. I am not great at marketing, if anyone here is, then I appreciate your assistance:
Yes I did read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (in my undergraduate days 50 years ago) but what I took away from it at the time was the idea that modern Western man had lost touch with the importance of knowing and appreciating the technology of his own tools.
European liberalism's craven accomodation of Islamic culture - fundamentally incompatible with its own Christian heritage - is indeed corrosive but to me it is a symptom, not the cause, of our civilisational disintegration. One of many symptoms of Western liberalism's self-destruct.
I wrote at length on this in my Madness of Intelligentsias essay series which you might find an interesting read. In particular this one: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/stairway-to-equiheaven which talks about the truly poisonous philosophy of Relativism which, in my view is at the root of most of the crazy things that Western Liberalism has done to itself in the 20th c. and beyond. Islamification Yes but other symptoms too that I wrote about here for instance: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-androgyny-syndrome
Thank you for subscribing and thank you for the links....I will take a look
Sergio Leone would certainly agree with your subtitle. And he chose the Western film and the Gangster film as two relatively unexplored domains in which humble melodrama could be raised to the sublime heights of Greek tragedy.
I think that many of our favorite films and novels are cherished by us because they affirm, even if in a partial or fragmentary way, the dignity and value of human experience. As for the grand stories, the civilizational epics, I'm not sure we need a new story as much as we need to recover the skillset to appreciate the tradition which we have inherited. The great works of genius from the Bible to Dante to Shakespeare to Blake to Tolkien are no less profound today than when they were written. But we no longer have the time to read them, nor the attention span and intellectual capacity to appreciate them.
The forces that would diminish us have brought us to this pass. The Gen Z kids rejoice when humanities departments and their required courses are cancelled. The latest polls show that among those between the ages of 18 and 24, a majority supports Hamas in the war in Gaza.
If we are ever to be free again to create powerful new stories, we will first need to prevail in the present struggle. And although I always disdained dystopian novels and films, I've come to believe that they are our best guides to understanding contemporary reality.
I'm pleased to hear that you found my comment to be of value. Though I rarely comment, I often read your essays and your readers' thoughtful comments. Kudos for having created such a pleasant niche free of ideological rancor where intelligent conversations can still take place.
Thought provoking, thank you. It does feel that we have forgotten our stories, including The Story - the one where Bethlehem had a role. Most good stories from Snow White to Harry Potter reflect like themes (without detracting of course from The Story) of things to avoid, things to aim for and being a goodie and not a baddie. Now we have textbooks for the over educated, and social media for everyone else.
Well done. The recent change in tactics has been much needed and much welcomed by many of us. We wish they would spread to our friends abroad. As you note, tactics are not a sustainable force. Sustainability requires an under laying foundation of ideals, principles and philosophical clarity. Without that, tactics quickly degenerate into pragmatism and that quickly results in the mess we have now. Trump is a pragmatic tactician, thankfully with a clear vision of a desired outcome. But I don't seem him as the man who can articulate and codify the political philosophy underlying his tactics. It will be critical that the ground be laid before the midterms, and certainly before 2028 or the smoothest talker will get the girl.
In regard to exploring and consuming narratives, my education about literature started with my mother's endorsement of Shakespeare and ended with my (college level) English classes in high school. My consumption of "literature" now consists of capturing "fly by" commentary from the more erudite audiences and readers such as I find in threads like this.
I am now so fearful of wasting time that I avoid fiction except via movies/films. Even there, there can be limits: "the Nazi's are evil" trope can become overdone with excess exposure so the feelings of disturbance and fear it used to elicit no longer works. The use of CGI and extravagant scenes and backgrounds require some relaxation of reality, but that can also demand too much. Of course, 98% of what passes for new fiction today is mostly just distracting entertainment [I initially wrote "distracting garbage"].
A visit to any decent library shows that no one can profitably consume over a lifetime more than a few thousand of the books on the shelves. However, as a nonreligious person I find it discomforting that so many seek answers from ONLY the Bible (OT and NT), even granting that the narratives presented therein attempt to capture the wisdom of human understanding after a few thousand years of experience with "civilization" [and to promote the current political regime]. But science has destroyed literal interpretations and still too few have moved on to more metaphorical uses/analyses.
Our world today now consists of more narrative threads (and threats?) than the days of old: scientific, historical, political, economic, medical, investment/ financial, mechanical, etc. How many books must we read to encompass this set of narratives, and then integrate them into a manageable whole? An hour or two with Graham (and friends) on a Sunday morning seems more useful to me than an equivalent time spent listening to sermons in a church pew.
Oh, and what is this essay and thread if not an attempt to use rationality and reason to discuss the merits and limits of eliciting feelings from a given narrative - as fiction or nonfiction? :-)
Being of mature years, never occupying a strata beyond the ordinary, but having lived and seen a thing or two, I find your daydream realistic in concept and hopeful in outcome. For everything there is the pro and con, and being human-natured we make frequent use of both in our time here on the temporal plane. Conservatism is the innate understanding that utopia is an illusion that never materializes into heaven on earth. Hell is its inevitable outcome, yet conservatism needs the counterbalance of liberalism, and vise versa. Finding the balance is the hard part.
‘The dominant market is for commentary (and venting) on the current here-and-now of Progressivism’s social and political folly. ‘
You got me Graham!
Great essay. It’s a cliché, but I learned more about politics, the siren seductive pull of authoritarianism, the nature of language, and the power of propaganda from one Orwell novel than from all the non fiction commentary I have ever read on those topics.
And the stand up comedy of Bill Hicks taught me to be cynical and sceptical about all of it.
ATB
Thank you....and good to hear from you.
LSO is in another niche it seems to me (although perhaps a bigger one than mine)....keeping perspective on all the political folly via a sense of humour. I always enjoy your posts anyway.
Often we learned objective truth from humor and satire.
I’ve come to the realization that just trying to monitor, much less manage, the current firehose in news & information is more than a full time job. Can’t / don’t want to ignore it, but don’t know how to deal with it effectively, either.
Your excellent, thought provoking post is the kind of thing I don’t want to miss, but l was lucky it caught my attention.
It would be nice if there was someone I could trust to curate what I’m interested in, but that can lead to another can of worms.
I still read a lot, mostly fiction; I have a list of books on political theory that I plan to read, but, like you, I seldom get even half way through, maybe it’s the writing, and not me.
"someone I could trust to curate what I’m interested in"....that really hits the nail on the head.
In our ever-closer AI future, could it be one's new AI 'friend' and 'helper'? A prospect both scary and enticing.
The more we attempt to "keep up" the less we will be able to actually live and meet our true obligations to family, church, friends, community. How much do we really need to know to live productive and fulfilling lives? Much less than we have been led to believe, I think.
The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on - Omar Khayyam.
Classic Liberalism (as practiced by Thomas Jefferson and John Wayne) allows for the exploration of opposing views and the consideration of benefits and unintended consequences. Our so-called modern civilization (a.k.a. Medieval Islamic hate in open conflict with the West) is a product of liberalism that fell off the tracks when Madelyn Murray O'Hare ruined public education. The Tao is constantly in motion. You can feel it in the air.
"...the essence of Progressivism is that it is a juvenile mentality of upsides with no downsides.....a permanent have-your-cake-and-eat-it arrested adulthood." Great line. Keep in mind this is also the byproduct of commercial marketing for Big Tech: the NEXT, newer, latest version of the software, hardware, whatever, is the BEST! Newer is always somehow better! The next, always the next, keep buying, keep upgrading constantly, so that they continue narrowing the window in which the current is supported. So even the NOW is being continually erased. No wonder people are confused and retreat into a mental stew composed of equal parts fact, fantasy and misinformation.
The so-called "vibe shift" is the increasingly mainstream recognition that "maximal individual autonomy'" can't sustain a culture. There's broad acknowledgement that society needs to chare something beyond: do as thou wilt (as long as no one else gets hurt.) But we've no idea what that should be. So until I see someone propose an alternative to John Stuart Mill, I wouldn't be celebrating the demise of liberalism.
Literature as a window into the political strikes me as accurate. I tell my civics students that Karl Marx and Charles Dickens were both writing about the exploitation of early industrial capitalism in Britain. But a whole lot more people have read Oliver Twist than Das Kapital. Another good example is Anna Sewell's Black Beauty -- she essentially created the modern view of horses with a single anthropomorphized book.
More of our ruling class has read Das Kapital. We would be better served had they read Dickens.
That is a profound insight to have conveyed to your students about Marx vs. Dickens. Good thinking!
But I hope you then followed up with an assignment to read some Hayek or Milton Freedman, so they could also grasp the errors of Marx vs. the real history of the proletariat as the industrial age "progressed". Jon Haidt suggests our reason is often employed in service of justifying our emotions, but I would hope sometimes reason can then extend and augment our understanding, even if/when "primed" by the intensity of feelings.
As I age I realize more the need for self-discipline, whether it is getting in daily exercise or interrupting daily routine with wasting time in boredom. I love attempting a little poetry and painting. But the digital world in substack offers a good variety of analysis and information that is so much better than MSM etc. I find your expression "anyone who manages to maintain a balance between intellectual curiosity and scepticism" fits me perfectly.
8am Mass this morning, I’m a returning Catholic. My wife won’t come due to the Mary thing so worship again w/ her at 11am Evangelical service. I can’t do this life without God. Saw your post Graham and thought I better listen to Dire Straits ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ on ride home before I read something that is going to be deep and good, which I did, and is. Then read your post while enjoying a listen to ‘Telegraph Road’ which was a musical companion to part of your thesis — that today’s online dopamine-hitting tech is tattering (replacing) the fireside chat as the age-old baton passing on - of right and wrong into one’s bones. The rise and fall of civilizations, the impacts of industrialization and tech upon the individual and community. Now, how do we keep AI written novels at arms-length? You know, those words that will come from an entity that never experienced a 1st kiss, heartbreak of gaining, then losing love, who never held a baby in its arms…
“A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness“
“News’ about the world beyond one’s immediate, intimate environment was scarce leaving plenty of head-space for other ways of viewing reality. “
I want to agree with everything in this excellent essay. But…
The internet and social media even more so make everything local in a way, and that to me explains more about the hopelessness eating at younger generations than older parents and single children.
The decline and almost absence of reading, especially long form, in younger people does not make me optimistic either. The culture is becoming more and more visual and mimetic, without self reflection as the author notes.
The shifting obsessions of the woke (climate, racism, trans, Palestine, billionaires etc.) will continue latching on new and more destructive moral panics because their worldview is entirely post-modern (oppressed vs. oppressor) and offers no description of the world that aligns with reality, creating a self replicating form of malaise and morosity.
The fragmentation of information makes it that much harder to correct and find common bonds with neighbors.
I have tried my hand at writing fiction.
In circa 2018 Anne-Marie Waters put a call out. For people to write about their vision of what the UK would be like in the yeaar 2050. Here is my short story, "Hellish 2050".
From that beginning came a book of the same name, a website of the same name, and now a Substack of the same name.
Here is my short story:
https://hellish2050.substack.com/p/hellish-2050-a-short-story
HELLISH 2050
First published October 2018
Koran 9:5 Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush...
Who is it that decides whether someone is an idolater? It is he who has the biggest weapon, of course.
Three weeks ago the Behemoth class submarine, HMS Barak slipped quietly down the Clyde, to play a crucial role in a pre-planned attack. The officer in charge is Captain Omar Rogers. He has been chosen for this mission due to his single-mindedness, his loyalty to the Northern Caliphate, and his grasp of the True Theology. Although other officers were considered for this special mission, none gave such assurance that they would complete the task as Captain Rogers had. Nevertheless, as an additional insurance, also on board is Faith Enforcement Commissar Mohammed Hardy and his contingent of Faith Enforcement Police. Just in case the captain developed any doubts during the execution of the mission.
Faith Enforcement Commissar Hardy, Captain Rogers and most of the officers and crew are of white European parentage. They are all, every one of them, True Believers.
Night has fallen over the Arabian Sea. The date is 4th Safar 1473 AH or by the cursed infidel calendar, it is 21st October 2050. Traditionally Safar is the month in which the houses of the enemy are looted. It is not a sacred month.
continue here:
https://hellish2050.substack.com/p/hellish-2050-a-short-story
I too have made a few attempts at fiction. In my dreams, to be a good novellist would be a greater achievement than a good essayist but I have had to accept that it is not in me. I am what I call a Big Picture writer (and a good one I am vain enough to say) but to be a good novellist is about noticing (and retaining a memory of) life's myriad little details.....how people look, how they move, things they say etc etc etc.
Thanks again fro the links which I will look at sometime soon.
Graham, this is a thought-provoking article, thank you.
I have now subscribed to your Substack.
Did you ever read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"? There was the tragedy, it described, of a Greek warrior. He was not so much concerned about his own death in battle, as much as the idea that if he failed, his wife and child would be taken into slavery.
I have a similar feeling regarding the impending collapse of the UK in particular, and Western civilisation in general. We have to admit it now, there is no use pretending. The rose tinted spectacles must be discarded. The naive wishful thinking, and hope that there exists a "moderate Islam" must be ditched. Without urgent and concerted effort, right now, then the UK WILL become Islamic. Within relatively few decades.
For my own sake, I am not overly concerned. Maybe I only have one or two decades remaining anyway. But it is for the sake of my young relatives that I persevere. I do not wish for them to live as subjugated dhimmis under the jackboot of Islam. We have 10 years, 15 years maximum, before "the point of no return". The advance of Islam must be halted and reversed this decade, or it is goodbye to the UK.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3137474d13eb11757acb22c9606d24d351d28520cc09479daededdb8d1203a44.jpg?w=800&h=413
And here are the fruits of my labours: over 20 books on the topic of Islam and its evils. I am trying to get them to a wider audience now. I am not great at marketing, if anyone here is, then I appreciate your assistance:
https://hellish2050.substack.com/
Yes I did read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (in my undergraduate days 50 years ago) but what I took away from it at the time was the idea that modern Western man had lost touch with the importance of knowing and appreciating the technology of his own tools.
European liberalism's craven accomodation of Islamic culture - fundamentally incompatible with its own Christian heritage - is indeed corrosive but to me it is a symptom, not the cause, of our civilisational disintegration. One of many symptoms of Western liberalism's self-destruct.
I wrote at length on this in my Madness of Intelligentsias essay series which you might find an interesting read. In particular this one: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/stairway-to-equiheaven which talks about the truly poisonous philosophy of Relativism which, in my view is at the root of most of the crazy things that Western Liberalism has done to itself in the 20th c. and beyond. Islamification Yes but other symptoms too that I wrote about here for instance: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-androgyny-syndrome
Thank you for subscribing and thank you for the links....I will take a look
Sergio Leone would certainly agree with your subtitle. And he chose the Western film and the Gangster film as two relatively unexplored domains in which humble melodrama could be raised to the sublime heights of Greek tragedy.
I think that many of our favorite films and novels are cherished by us because they affirm, even if in a partial or fragmentary way, the dignity and value of human experience. As for the grand stories, the civilizational epics, I'm not sure we need a new story as much as we need to recover the skillset to appreciate the tradition which we have inherited. The great works of genius from the Bible to Dante to Shakespeare to Blake to Tolkien are no less profound today than when they were written. But we no longer have the time to read them, nor the attention span and intellectual capacity to appreciate them.
The forces that would diminish us have brought us to this pass. The Gen Z kids rejoice when humanities departments and their required courses are cancelled. The latest polls show that among those between the ages of 18 and 24, a majority supports Hamas in the war in Gaza.
If we are ever to be free again to create powerful new stories, we will first need to prevail in the present struggle. And although I always disdained dystopian novels and films, I've come to believe that they are our best guides to understanding contemporary reality.
Thank you. Your comment adds much to the theme of my essay.
I'm pleased to hear that you found my comment to be of value. Though I rarely comment, I often read your essays and your readers' thoughtful comments. Kudos for having created such a pleasant niche free of ideological rancor where intelligent conversations can still take place.
Thank you Sam
One of the upsides of technology is having the ability to read your work. Thank you for another brilliant essay.
Thank you Mary for that lovely comment....I can feel my head getting bigger!
Thought provoking, thank you. It does feel that we have forgotten our stories, including The Story - the one where Bethlehem had a role. Most good stories from Snow White to Harry Potter reflect like themes (without detracting of course from The Story) of things to avoid, things to aim for and being a goodie and not a baddie. Now we have textbooks for the over educated, and social media for everyone else.
Well done. The recent change in tactics has been much needed and much welcomed by many of us. We wish they would spread to our friends abroad. As you note, tactics are not a sustainable force. Sustainability requires an under laying foundation of ideals, principles and philosophical clarity. Without that, tactics quickly degenerate into pragmatism and that quickly results in the mess we have now. Trump is a pragmatic tactician, thankfully with a clear vision of a desired outcome. But I don't seem him as the man who can articulate and codify the political philosophy underlying his tactics. It will be critical that the ground be laid before the midterms, and certainly before 2028 or the smoothest talker will get the girl.
In regard to exploring and consuming narratives, my education about literature started with my mother's endorsement of Shakespeare and ended with my (college level) English classes in high school. My consumption of "literature" now consists of capturing "fly by" commentary from the more erudite audiences and readers such as I find in threads like this.
I am now so fearful of wasting time that I avoid fiction except via movies/films. Even there, there can be limits: "the Nazi's are evil" trope can become overdone with excess exposure so the feelings of disturbance and fear it used to elicit no longer works. The use of CGI and extravagant scenes and backgrounds require some relaxation of reality, but that can also demand too much. Of course, 98% of what passes for new fiction today is mostly just distracting entertainment [I initially wrote "distracting garbage"].
A visit to any decent library shows that no one can profitably consume over a lifetime more than a few thousand of the books on the shelves. However, as a nonreligious person I find it discomforting that so many seek answers from ONLY the Bible (OT and NT), even granting that the narratives presented therein attempt to capture the wisdom of human understanding after a few thousand years of experience with "civilization" [and to promote the current political regime]. But science has destroyed literal interpretations and still too few have moved on to more metaphorical uses/analyses.
Our world today now consists of more narrative threads (and threats?) than the days of old: scientific, historical, political, economic, medical, investment/ financial, mechanical, etc. How many books must we read to encompass this set of narratives, and then integrate them into a manageable whole? An hour or two with Graham (and friends) on a Sunday morning seems more useful to me than an equivalent time spent listening to sermons in a church pew.
Oh, and what is this essay and thread if not an attempt to use rationality and reason to discuss the merits and limits of eliciting feelings from a given narrative - as fiction or nonfiction? :-)
There's a lot here to chew on ssri. "An hour or two with Graham and friends"…now there's a thought!... thank you