Turned out to be sort of a Religion Week here in the Reactosphere®. So we’ll lead with that…
An important piece from Spandrell: Religion is absurd. But we need it anyway—which I would have thought made it rather less absurd. It hardly seems absurd to think that existence needs a cause. And it seems a lot more absurd to conceive of the universe as a place where meaningless, purposeless forces accidentally conspired to make creatures capable of conceiving of the universe than it is to conceive of an conscious creator who wanted it that way. But either way it is a purely aesthetic judgement I suppose. Anyway, yes, religion serves at least two material purposes: 1) a binding agent for the good of society; and 2) “tricking” us into believing the good of society is something worth being bound to.
Also from Spandrell: expert commentary on Starbucks’ Not-the-Onion Story. “Say, are you fellas baristas?” “No ma’am, we’re Race Togetherness Evangelists!” What could possibly go wrong? Bonald notices one obvious advantage to CEO Howard Schultz move: The Starbucks’ barista can get some use out of that humanities critical studies degree after all!
You’ve heard various Neoreactionaries conceive, with some reliance on St. Paul, of society as an organism. Well, Sarah Perry says that such an organism requires nutrition, and conceives of Social Nutrition and a Cuisine of Social Behavior. Yer gonna hafta RTWT…
Speaking of smart non-Christians who nevertheless get religion, Graaaaaagh has nice piece up: European religion: ritual and reconstruction. I respectfully disagree with the direction he takes it, but he gets a lot very much right all along the way. I can disagree with things that make sense. I cannot agree or disagree with things that make none.
Donovan Greene violates the neoreaction-wide prohibition from talking about (or talking about talking about) nationalism in Brothers in Bondage. (Welp, it’s Herding Cats… all the way down, I suppose.) He strikes a completely non-retarded balance on the question in my opinion. And a non-retarded balance is the right-most thing in the universe. Aside from Gnon himself, that is. And just sneaking in before the bell: Here are Donovan’s Friday Frags——Kewl Kids Do Jackal Hour, Male Bonding Done Right, Rub NYC’s Nose In It (and much else) Edition. (Hey, punk, ya think running the world, like we do in NYC, is easy?)
Jim has some final remarks on Nationalism, Whiteness, and Kin. Also, he applauds Putin’s deft passing of Cathedral fitness tests. And late-breaking science reporting from Jim: High reproductive variance among males, in which the estimate of the total number of males who ever reproduced has been lowered to 1/3 of them. Be thankful for patriarchy, folks. Be truly thankful!
Watson considers Liquidity, Aristocracy and Serfdom. This is high-test Neoreactionary theory going on. Do not attempt this at home, kids:
It is not until the warlord becomes a sedentary bandit that he truly becomes an aristocrat, alternatively it is not until the merchant builds an army that he becomes an aristocrat. Until those conditions are met the aristocrat has little in common with their subjects.
RTWT. It is an early contender for the best thing I’ve read all week.
Free Northerner builds upon a not entirely stupid Cracked article in Hotness is All That’s Left. Yes, if ladies want to be valued for more than their looks, then a good start would be in cultivating the interior feminine virtues that men (and women) also find attractive. Also, some musings on The Selection Effects of War—and not good ones… if, say, you want to be well-prepared for war.
Bryce Laliberte talks this week about Semantic Communion—or rather the lack of it of late.
As people become more generally estranged from each other semantically, the process exacerbates itself. The gains to discussion plummet, the risks increase catastrophically. This is conducive to a public which only use of the public conch is not imposing order but to decry and shame public enemies. Public discourse becomes little more than finding the witches to blame for whatever disliked event has taken place.
Speaking of Bryce, Sydney Trads put up a big quote from his book. Also a perfunctory, but deliciously worded, disclaimer that Bryce had to add to his book The Origin of Social Order. Delicious because it strikes me as a supremely well-crafted dare to progressive reader to be truly open-minded about the work.
Cambria Will Not Yield shares his well-considered thoughts on the Netanyahu Spectacle. I thought this was particularly well put:
In right-wing circles, it is considered blasphemy to suggest that all problems cannot be resolved by the eradication of the Jews. But such a view is unhistorical. The Jews aided the Jacobins in the French Revolution, but it was lapsed Catholics, not the Jews, who led the charge against everything Christian and European. So it remains today: Almost every radical organization has Jews at the forefront, but such organizations also contain lapsed Christians who would continue the anti-European work of those organizations if the Jews suddenly disappeared from the scene. Although most Jews are secularized (they no longer believe in the first five books of the Bible), they still retain an inbred abhorrence for all things stemming from incarnational, Christian Europe. For what is the essence of Judaism? It is a hatred for our incarnate Lord, which makes it particularly ironic that the most vehement enemies of the Jews are the neo-pagans, who deny the reality of the Incarnation, and the Roman Catholic traditionalists, who are uncomfortable with the main implication of the Incarnation, namely that our Lord has a human heart.
The Scandal of the Incarnation may well be the scandal at the heart of the Protestant Formation, which is practically coterminous with modernity.
And speaking of neoreactionary theorizing… Darwinian Reactionary Empedocles has a nice part II in Why Diversity Destroys Social Capital (part I, which I missed last week, here… (he is now followed so that won’t happen again!)).
[S]ocial capital exists to the extent that interpersonal stabilizing functions proceed Normally, and is lost to the extent that abNormal conditions prevent successful functioning. Social capital just is the presence of Normal conditions for interpersonal stabilizing function and diversity destroys social capital by preventing the successful performance of this function. The study of social capital should thus be the study of how people coordinate and cooperate and so arrive at stabilizing functions, and what factors inhibit or prevent successful coordination.
So how does diversity interfere with that? Well, for example, ….
Simply not possessing the accent that is commonly used in a region is alienating. If one feels that ones listeners are not picking up on the subtleties that are conveyed with an accent, that they are not adapted to the conventions on how words are to be pronounced, meaning decay is the result of this breakdown in the stabilizing proper function of this use of language, and one will quickly either adapt to and adopt the regional accent, or go find others with whom one is already coordinated and so are able to appreciate it. What usually happens is that people who move to a new region come to adopt the local accent as a means of coordinating with those with whom one must communicate and thus remove the alienation and enjoy the benefits of coordination.
Now see that? While you were dinking around on twitter or /duck/ jonesing for another neoreactionary fix, Empedocles was out there doing Real Neoreactionary Thought™. The real work of neoreaction is not in The Spectacle, but quite outside of it, even sometimes in spite of it.
And Slumlord, the Social Pathologist, has gotten active again. Which is great, but I wasn’t paying attention. He has a big piece up on The Problems of Semitisation.
By Semitisation, I mean the interpretation of things through a Jewish dimension to the exclusion of other facts. Now, I want to stress that I don’t believe that this is as a result of a deliberate policy by the Jews or some sort of conspiratorial effort, rather, historical and biocognitive factors are more than responsible for this state of affairs.
But isn’t that about what Kevin MacDonald would say? Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Nick Land notices Ace of Spades noticing that conservative support for the GOP is counter-productive.
Wasenlightened tells us why he thinks only a tiny minority of the participants in Google’s Leftist Singularity are true believers. No one really wants to talk, merely talk, about it.
The closest anyone has come to speaking aloud to me about Google’s newfound passion for runaway leftism is when one white male friend referred to it obliquely as “all the stuff that’s been happening lately.”
Is it because sexual harassment is a serious subject? World War II was a serious subject. You could start a little small talk about Midway and have the guy down the lunch counter tell you that his son was killed there while piloting a torpedo bomber.
But people talked about the war just the same. Of course unlike us moderns, they lived in a free society. They did not have an official theology.
They were not afraid all the time.
Hey, way to fight that power, Google Justice Warriors (GJWs)!! Also, he takes on Cameralism, neo- and otherwise, in Antivirus, in which the marvelous adaptations of Cthulu are highlighted.
You know how Mitchell Laurel is all over Russian and Novorussian politics like a cheap suit? Well, he’s willing to share the wealth too. Donovan Greene posts a Q&A session with Mitchell on Russia.
Speaking of social capital, Athelron has a nice bit up over at More Right: Sustainable Virtue.
This Week at Social Matter
Mark Yuray provides yet another positive review of Anissimov’s Critique of Democracy. Also a guy at Counter Currents reviewed it here.
Henry shows up in his normal Tuesday slot to talk about how The Left Killed the Working Class. He takes on the myth that automation is, or ever did, or likely ever will “kill jobs”.
If ‘automation’ has resulted in mass unemployment, then why does Foxconn employ so many goddamned people in their factories? Why are there so many factories in South Korea manufacturing items like televisions which America used to lead the world in? Why do Japanese auto makers enjoy an advantage in an industry America once lead?
Obvious answer: The legal and regulatory environment in the United States. By contrast:
In China, when a regulator doesn’t like you, he just has you shot and takes your factory. This is relatively straightforward compared to how the Americans will treat you if you try to start a factory here, if they even permit you to do so without bribing a dozen different alphabet agencies and the local politicians besides. Better a bullet in the base of the brain than a decade of your life wasted in court. At least that’s direct and honest.
Henry goes on to note how elite and comfortably middle class Americans pretty much enjoy this artificially created state of affairs, largely oblivious, save for occasional pious signaling, to the genuine desperation of the lower orders of would-be workers. He concludes with a plea that I unreservedly endorse:
People on the right should not shrug their shoulders at the needs of the lower orders of people for meaningful, productive work. Knowing that they can’t be made into high-end ‘knowledge workers’ by education alone (because intelligence has biological roots), we ought to aim to roll back bureaucratized nature-worship and throw away the fossilized legislation of the New Deal both — without turning the country into an industrial sewer in the process.
And, speaking of Henry, Ascending the Tower Episode V featuring him is now up.
On Wednesday, Mitchell Laurel begins his series on A New American Foreign Policy. He makes an overwhelming case, not unfamiliar to those who’ve been reading him, that America is on a downward slide, as goes foreign policy and international prestige so goes the moral fiber of the average American. But not content to wallow in collapse porn, Mitchell maintains a sense of hopefulness of recovery in America and a redesign—simplification really—of her foreign policy. Looking forward to parts two (and beyond??).
John Glanton, firing as usual on all 16 or so of his cylinders, puts an awesome post Ideology and Etiology.
The marcher with the “Bigger Is Better” sign and the marcher with “No Means No” sign are both tilting at windmills. There never was a conspiracy by society to shame fat people qua fat people nor to rape women qua women. But they are both reacting, in a sense, to our collective failures, to real and present dysfunctions in our lifestyles. We on the Right can, and absolutely should, resist the false etiologies of their condition, ones that contemporary victim identity politics have presented them with. But we should also recognize that, unless we address the underlying morbidity, we are only treating symptoms. You could annihilate those ideologies forever and the sickness would remain.
Something is rotten in the State of The West that no amount of acceptance can fix. In fact, the very idea that acceptance is in any way a solution is a big part of the problem.
Friday was a double-whammy! Daniel Robinson arrives with The Flight From Truth—an eloquent meditation on the high costs of low social trust. And Reed Perry formulates A Patriarchal Restoration Theory, which is an all-your-base-are-belong-to-us defense of patriarchy as the “DNA of civilization”. Much doubleplusgood in there, but I wanted to highlight this paragraph in particular:
Selflessness [a virtue selected for by patriarchy] is a key component to understanding Western Civilization and Christianity, the religion of self-sacrifice. It is embodied in the unselfish Western pursuit of a greater good, whether for God, country, science, or family. This pressure has driven us on a path to great heights. But the higher one ascends, the further one may fall.
RTWT. In fact, read all of Social Matter.
Speaking of Henry Dampier, let’s see what he was up to… aside from deflecting the wrath of Peppermint, I mean…
This Week in Henry Dampier
On Saturday, Henry talks about The Grievance Cycle. And here you thought it was a positive exponential function. Nah, there’s only so much influence for sale. Prices get bid up. Then they crash. That’s when you buy. Assuming you survive.
Sunday he writes about Trust in the Written Word. And how “protective cynicism”, however advantageous to the individual under less than truthful regimes, is not something our elites should be cultivating.
Next up: Recruiting Privates To World War T.
So, why do otherwise ordinary people, who might not even be aware that transgender people exist, suddenly act as if it’s the most important issue in the world? It’s because it’s on the docket as a crucial social issue by the state religion, which is embodied in the progressive spirit. Expressing love for transgender people and striking out at unbelievers is a way to show piety to the spirit of prog.
Moral status signaling is a currency that people can print in their basement. Needless to say, we’re drowning in it now, and almost no one is getting richer.
On Tuesday, Henry talks about how Words and Images Control Your Mind. And as one of the few non-Jews in advertising, we should take him seriously:
People in the media are often accused by dissidents of being in the mind control business. This charge is absolutely true. Unfortunately, no method of perfect mind control has yet been developed, despite numerous crash programs and ongoing experiments to that end. The most that can be done, really, is mind-nudging, mind-jostling, which can eventually result in something like fragmentary control over some big part of the average person’s mind.
Knowing this — knowing that what we see changes how we think, and what we think changes how we behave — it behooves us to be much more careful about what we allow ourselves to see, to hear, and to read. Thoughts must precede actions, and misguided or evil thoughts precede evil actions.
Wednesday, Henry deals with the hard problem of asymmetric morality in Taqiyya & Kitman Against Progressives. I don’t think one needs to lie in order to not tell the truth.
Thursday’s book review covers Roger Scruton’s Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. Henry linked this video. So I went off and watched that, and it made my day. Why is it that The Beeb can produce such wonderful documentaries, written by incredibly smart people about important subjects and here in The States we get transparent prog propaganda at best. (And that’s after filtering the 99% of programming that is simply pure unredeemable filth.) Anyway I digress… Read Henry’s article and watch Scruton’s documentary. Pay especial attention to the connections between beauty and sacredness, because… they’re pretty much the same thing.
And on Finance Friday, Henry closes out the week with yet another Property & Freedom Society conference video: Hülsmann on Fiat Money Distortions and astute commentary thereupon.
So… what was SoBL up to…?
This Week in 28 Sherman…
Son of Brock Landers begins the week by wondering aloud about an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. He says the time has almost never been better. Next SoBL tips his hat for Iran’s Amazing Work, i.e., at developing what many believe to be nuclear weapons capability in short order, without yet getting nuked themselves. And they didn’t have to play Crazy Nork Uncle to get it.
I’m really disappointed with this: The Far Left Isn’t Setting Up a Michelle in 2016 Run. Well if the far left won’t do it, couldn’t we? So much for my long position in Jiffy Pop. If I may register my predictions here: I am far from convinced Hillary will even be the Democrat presidential nominee in 2016, and I am virtually certain that even if she is the nominee, she will not win the presidency. I have that much [holds up 1/2 inch of space between index finger and thumb] faith in the American People (but no more than that).
On Wednesday, SoBL pens a review of the documentary Fed Up. Sounds like he didn’t think much of it:
Is this documentary just another “Big Food is Big Evil” documentary? Yes. Humans have little agency, advertising destroys their decision making ability and this film follows the Supersize Me format of treating people as automatons who have no power. Katie Couric, Bill Clinton and Mike Bloomberg are not going to be involved in a probing documentary. Clinton even does his sad eyes, bite the lip, “I’m sorry” face when asked about ’90s food policy. This is just enough to get people mad at Big Food and create an external villain, “sugar”.
So Fed Up does exactly what documentaries are supposed to do: Get smart people talking about important stuff and digging for answers in the wrong place.
Finally: Immigration in two pictures. Yowsa (for the first one).
So… What was up over at A House with No Child, eh?
This Week in Mitchell Laurel
Last Saturday, Mitchell has some sympathy for Poor Vojvodina, Next On The Hit List, i.e., that of Foggy Bottom. Also Purposeful Purposes: A People’s Needs: It’s telos all the way down. Even will is a derivate of telos.
Next, The Necessity of Inspiring Leadership. It was a call to moral arms of sorts and I liked it a lot:
We desire societal change. We seek to cast out the dark and corrosive fuels that propel our people into the abyss and restore goodness. And there is only one way to accomplish this end: By shifting and modifying the culture. We cannot change the means or the environment and expect Goodness for the underlying decadence of our culture will poison all that it touches at a greater or lesser speed. But always it corrupts. No; We must change the culture.
It’s going to take generations of bottom-up before we ever have the chance to go top-down. Get used to it.
On Monday, Mitchell outlines How the West should treat Vladimir Putin and the New Russia—admiration is acceptable; witless copying and blind apologetics is not. Then more Neoreactionary Spirituality in When the World Doesn’t Give Resistance. And more Ruskie stuff in An Important Announcement from the Russians, which apparently didn’t involve the premature death of Vladimir Putin.
On Tuesday, we have Propaganda, Delusion, and Making your Own Reality with the late and not at all well-digested conflict in Bosnia as a backdrop.
On Wednesday, Mitchell offers a Shout Out to The Rawness, from whom he gained the following insight:
Bullshitting is extremely dangerous because it is a full embrace of intellectual hedonism and self-delusion. Lying at least keeps one in touch with objective reality, despite the attempt to subvert it for one’s own gain.
For that reason liars are not an enemy of truth, only betrayers who never fully leave the fold as seekers of the objective. Bullshitters are the true enemy of truth, for they reject the worth of it entirely in the pursuit of their own viceful pleasures.
He also notes The City of London is Always on Its Toes, and what the perspicacious London banking Elite see doesn’t bode well for American hegemony.
Here is yet another prediction on Novorossiya with some tracking on older ones. And Mitchell is counting a late lack of EU appetite for continued Russian sanctions as an “on the cusp” of another successful prediction. Will German split with America? He thinks it likely but is unwilling to put money down on it yet.
Friday brings news of Trouble in Nagorno-Karabakh. And taking a brief pause from the breaking news of Eurasia, Mitchell engages in some instructive meta discussion with The European East is its Own Civilization.
This Week Elsewhere…
Orthodox Laissez-fairist, of whom I’d previously not heard, gets it in Why Leftists fear Neoreactionaries. (HT Land.) Then from earlier today, OLF brings us an utterly non-retarded view of Ethno-Nationalism. Just who is this guy?
Briggs makes the Climate Denial Hall of Fame. Again, I think. Also notes from the St. Paddy’s Day Parade.
Over at The Orthosphere, Bonald digs into Reformed Theology so you don’t have to.
In Drama news what have we…? Dante notices Michael Anissimov making a Less Than Funny Twitter Post (which I think is called a “tweet” IIRC).
Peppermint makes a fair amount of sense in outlining some of the differences between usury, which these days seems to explain some of the behaviors of spherical cows in certain vacuums, and predatory lending, which is what people actually hate:
Predatory lending is bad for the community because it gives resources to predators, who are greasy short-armed characters who rub their hands together incessantly and have noses like cat’s claws.
Also from Peppermint, moar Revilo Oliver in 30 Years Later. And this which defies summary.
Ted Colt announces his carefully considered departure from the Dark Enlightenment reading room. It’s all okay. He just plans to put some of it into practice, and that’s a lesson more of us should be taking. Also, following the California Supreme Court’s diktat that state judges must disassociate from Boy Scouts of America for the latter’s insufficient celebratey-ness for LGBT, Ted has A Modest Proposal. Powerful stuff:
We are within an age our fathers cursed us to travail, when men call evil good, and praise women for lies. It does us, the remnant, no good to behave as if we are a part of the communion of sin. Therefore, live your life within the dark truth with a candle lighting your way. Others will see it, and from that faint light floating atop crests of the wine-dark sea, may find hope amid the stormy flashes of light and shadows cast by others standing betwixt you.
Kakistocracy has breaking news on Permanent Brown Scare: Arizona State Edition. Apparently the administration of Arizona State University has displayed insufficient enthusiasm regarding violence toward “racists” and thereby tipped their hand that ASU is firmly in the grip of WNs, skinheads, Klansmen, and Nazis. Also, if California runs out of water, There’s Always Tequila.
Theden has updates from Ferguson: The Drama Continues, Low Information Shooters, and on how the DOJ’s Ferguson Report Shows Reality, Not Racial Bias.
And Cool A/C Bro makes his (first to my knowledge) appearance at Theden with Confessions of an Overeducated A/C Man. A decent bit of writing there on the Education Bubble and the pseudo-religious cult that works overtime to sustain it.
Skyagusta was a busy beaver this week. Or whatever kind of busy creature they have down there. He begins with a Southern reactionary message, drawing on southern intellectual giants George Fitzhugh and John C. Calhoun, to would-be Southern Libertarians. In a word, it is, “Don’t do it, Young Person!”
The problem with Libertarianism is that it places “freedom” and “liberty” as the ultimate ends of government, and therefore places it at odds with the health of society. Total freedom and good government are not only incompatible, but fundamentally opposed. Government is by definition the restriction of freedom. When done right, government limits on freedom serve to protect and preserve society.
Then, since we were talking about Calhoun, a big meaty review of the great statesman’s Disquisition on Government. And then a big piece from Skyagusta On Existential Threats. Interestingly, he lists country music as one of those existential threats. Regrettably, I tend to concur. Tho’ there is still much good in country music, various forms of degeneracy have taken over the main currents of the genre. I’ve often said that I’d rather subject my kids to the local hard rock (105.5 WDHA) station than the local country 94.7 Nash FM. There’s plenty of degeneracy on both, but at least in the former case the lyrics are not usually intelligible. Also, a big excerpt from (Walker Percy’s cousin and guardian) William Alexander Percy on Aristocracy and Honor Culture and the tall shadow it’s absence leaves. Late-breaking: Percy, Part II.
It had been brewing for nearly 6 years, but Mark Citadel finally rips Jessica Valenti’s 10,000 hamster-powered feminist wedding article to shreds in How to Serve your Testicles to a Feminazi.
Over at The Mitrailleuse, after big wins in pot and sodomy, Libertarianism is now looking like a dog that finally caught the car.
Malcolm Pollack gets a new knee. Here’s to a speedy recovery, Malcolm!
A mysterious fellow Devalier posts some rather articulate and concise thoughts about why Gradualism works for the left, not for the right—and what to do about it.
Welp. That’s all I got time fer. Hope I didn’t miss anything, or if I did maybe it was intentional. Gonna keep my eye on that Devalier fellow. Also this Orthodox Laissez-Fairist guy is pretty interesting, except for the sucky pseudonym that doesn’t roll well off the tongue. I know… I shall call him Cyril Kozlov. Welcome, Cyril, to the Neoreactosphere! (I sure hope that isn’t your real name.) Til next week then: Keep on Reactin! TRP… Over and out!!
Nick, thanks for the ever-flattering mention. One small correction: the excerpts I posted were from William Alexander Percy, Walker’s cousin and guardian.
[Oops. That’s embarassing. Shall correct. NBS]
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Thanks for the link, Nick. For some reason, the topic of feminism often draws me back to a more hard-line criticism.
Currently I am calming myself by writing a poetic epitaph for Modernity. The artistic pursuits can be as rewarding as the intellectual ones at times.
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