Going to declare Sunday the end of the Reactosphere® fiscal week for now and we’ll see how that goes. Apparently posting on Friday’s is the blog-traffic kiss of death. By Sunday night and Monday mornings, people’s minds are refreshed and able to attend to more than 140 bytes of information at a time. Or at least so I’m told.
Well it was big week for Neoreaction. Hestia Society stepped forward to take ownership of what is (and is not) Neoreactionary Philosophy: The Official Statement on the Leadership of NRx. The Tetrarchy—Hadley Bishop, Henry Dampier, Anton Silensky, and Warg Franklin—now rule Neoreaction. I got a mention among the White Hats. Unfortunately a few Black Hats also had to be named. So… the institution that we’ve been waiting for exists. And that institution is The Hestia Society for Social Studies.
Nearly simultaneous to Hestia’s announcement Thursday evening, all authors at More Right not named Michael Anissimov announced their break with him. They have created a new group blog: The Future Primaeval (TFP), which has been active for over a month underneath most (and certainly my) radar screens.
TFP thus far is a spectacular new blog. Warg Franklin allows Rudyard Kipling’s post WWI-self a conversation with his 1899 self in White Man’s Burden Revisited. Franklin also has some perspicacious observations from work-a-day life in Circumstance Follows Virtue. Also: A Case Study in Cultural Transmission, Why We Even Lift. Karl Hammer chimes in with some thoughts on The Allais “Paradox” and Scam Vulnerability.
Nick Land’s endorsement (and naming) of The Putsch is here. Oh if we’d only had a beer hall. Henry Dampier’s thoughts are here. Henry’s new role as Editor at Social Matter and his views on, and past success with funding, are an under-remarked aspect of Neoreaction’s recent formalization.
Free Northerner’s coverage “The Putsch” is most complete and offers a lot of food for thought. He makes many great points about leadership, natural and otherwise. Institutions almost never get purely natural leadership. The open-source model is: if you build it, you own it. That’s probably the closest to what we have happening now in Hestia. Passivism in practice means: Don’t Fight, Build! That’s what’s happening. I’m optimistic about Hestia Society’s future, but “We’ll see” is the only thing we know for sure right now about it.
Son of Brock Landers (SoBL) was the target of Michael Anissimov’s attempted dox and death threat on Friday, the Ides of May, 2015. This was the event that lost Michael what little credibility he had among a few holdouts among neoreactionary insiders. (He had lost mine a couple weeks earlier.) True to the form of the class act that he is, SoBL turns this opportunity into a teaching moment in Building Networks and Trust. The attempted dox was a bust and SoBL’s the one that owns all the guns (both literally and metaphorically).
Some people are saying neoreaction is dead, maybe, but you can’t kill a network of people seeking the truth.
In other news…
Jim takes a look at The Camp of the Saints these 40+ years on. Not the book so much as the prophecy. He helpfully highlights some very simple and effective strategies that Antipodean Anglophones have found to stem the tide. Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia buckle. He also pens A letter to Sunnis facing Shia Democracy.
Here is Jim on Losing Ramadi. And extensive commentary on Raping Sanza Stark, or rather on the hubbub about it and what that pretends (falsely) to mean.
Free Northerner takes a look at what’s behind the Achievement Gap. Also Based Free Northerner has some pointed commentary on Pointing the Guns so as to avoid friendly fire. Among other things he calls for a moratorium on behind-the-back snark toward Michael Anissimov. I fully concur with this opinion. Men “shit test” men all the time. It’s normal and natural, but not this way. If you’re going to call a man “a fag” or snark about his taste in animation or lingerie, then please… do it to his face. (And take notes because the coolness of his response will be important.)
Atavisionary has a proposal: Social Matter for the sciences. Not just the “social” ones. Also, our neoreactionary reditor discusses “You are not Open-Minded” fallacy. If it is even that.
Butch draws some well-deserved attention to Curt Doolittle’s 1000 Words.
Spandrell has a big quote from Robin Hanson about why Just Wrong is “just wrong”.
Neocolonial Christopher Polis has some great notes On Education and On Marriage.
Ace’s advice for men this week: “She’s not coming home. Because she was never there.”
CWNY has Fighting in the Dark—commentary on savages not quite so nobile as advertised. And then from last Saturday he writes about The Old Romance, with an assist from google books and the Rueful Whig: Edmund Burke.
Sonic pokes a good deal of fun at Kitten of the Blogosphere.
Donovan’s right on schedule with Friday Frags—Wish-I-Could-Be-Outraged-But-Only-So-Much-Outrage-in-the-world-Hipsters-Find-Good-Coffee-Like-Pigs-Find-Truffles-Booooiiooiiooing-Aesthetics Edition. He’s got a great direct attack line on the “well-intentioned” crowd:
You don’t get progress without oppression. If you define progress as the rolling back of oppression, you’re going to have a bad time.
Yeah, ya ol’ meanie. So stop yer skirt-clutching about oppression! Don’t you believe in… Progress?!
Mitchell has a couple posts up: Miss the Ukraine? Here’s what you need to know. No. That’s not about a beauty pageant. Also he asks: Will there be a Maidan 2.0 in Macedonia?
Land makes note of The Great Decoupling. Pushing on a string seems to have run its course.
This Week at Social Matter
David Grant has some tips on Reading The Classics Without Trigger Warnings. Well, not exactly:
No matter how much certain Leftists might wish things were otherwise, to study Classics is to immerse oneself in a world that did not care for their ideals. This fact has helped to insulate Classics from the worst insanities of Leftist scholarship. That becoming a classicist involves mastering two ancient languages, as well as at least two modern ones, has also helped in making Classics a relatively conservative discipline.
John Glanton talks about Retreating From Complexity—the sort that inheres to social orders of all kinds at all times—and into the warm and welcoming maw of utopian thinking. A reminder to denizens of both left and right, the only easy answer to life’s persistent questions is that there are no easy answers. This isn’t second grade.
Mark Christiansen takes the megaphone on Friday with Weaponize the Expats: The Global Phyle as Geopolitical Strategy. This is a look at the upsides as well as the downsides of out-breeding within a culture and the emergence of a transnational elite. Christiansen’s take is an unusual one. You’ll have to RTWT to understand his argument.
This Week in Henry Dampier
Light week at Henry Dampier’s this week due to travel. Travel that included cigars with some fellow travelers in NYC and a supper at Casa Estebanos. Henry begins the week with an important lesson on Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, Sexuality. The fundamental takeaway is when you try to get the cart of romance to pull the horse of self-giving love, bad stuff happens.
Some helpful Tips for Avoiding Internet Drama. Almost all of these are scalable for avoining IRL drama as well.
This was superb: Leftists Work For the Total State. Because in a totalitarian state, everyone “works for” the state. And a totalitarian state is exactly what we have. Only few notice it because analogies between the USSA and USSR are no longer so obvious. #AIACC (America is a communist country) and Henry outlines here clearly just exactly how that is so.
And then this: Henry’s The Skimming Economy is also excellent. He says stuff so much better than me. Like this:
Finance, properly understood, exists to make complex plans feasible. Finance under central banking tends to perform some of the same functions as with more historically stable hard-money finance, but with some critical distinctions — namely, that to make most plans possible, everything needs to go through the public banking system at some point.
Further, a central bank or some sort of coinage monopoly can continually skim and redistribute throughout the financial system. Currency ceases to be a highly accurate unit of account — a means of ‘keeping score’ — and becomes more a measure of how well connected and obedient you are to the system as a whole.
I seem to recall some Biblical injunction about unjust scales. We gotta reinterpret that rule for the 21st Century.
This Week in 28 Sherman
Things may have been quiet at Social Matter and Henry’s place this week, but not at all at SoBL’s. The light posting at Soci///al Matter will have a significant remedy in this Stupdendous News. Social Matter has been needing someone to fill the lacuna left by Bryce Laliberte’s sudden departure a few weeks ago. Posting SoBL’s Sunday “think” pieces there will, I think more than adequately, fill that gap.
Son of Brock Landers starts out the week with just a splendid piece: Secession Would Allow for Renewed Group Rituals. The failure to have fully American rituals is not usually high on moderners’ priority list, but the failure stands for so much more: A complete lack of national cohesion, a “war of all against all”. Democracy is fundamentally a lack of ownership of the commons (cultural and otherwise). When the commons are not owned, they are burnt up. America 2015 is in the late stages of that pillage.
He has a related follow-up on Tuesday: States Are Economically Larger Than People Realize. Secession is growing in popularity, and would genuinely benefit the vast majority of Americans, and probably the majority of interest groups—the DC-NYC power nexus being the most notable exception:
As one looks around the globe, the struggle of nationalist sentiment vs. USG globalist reach is really a fight over local control of their lives vs. the needs of the global cabal to control the commodities in that same region for their gain. Keep talk of secession going. If anyone questions the reality of a state becoming independent, remind them of regional states that could form. If they are a true believer progressive, just remind them that Sweden is weaker independently than many American states. Let the talk continue and remind people that states and communities are stronger than they think.
In light of the series finale of Mad Men, SoBL has several posts: Don Draper: Jewish Avatar (no joke); commentary proper on The Mad Men Finale; some thoughts on Why “The Carousel” Scene Is Special; and a not-at-all crazy idea for A Mad Men Spin Off.
And here is a bit of history in one picture: Aussies in Egypt in World War One—a scene that won’t be seen again.
This Week… Elsewhere
Speaking of Mad Men, over at The Mitrailleuse, James E. Miller thinks it Was a Depraved and Decadent Show that Gave Us an Incredible Portrayal of Humanity. I think by “incredible” he means “credible”. But other than that, I agree with his assessment.
Malcolm compares the Clintons to Kudzu. Sounds about right. If Libya can’t prevent Hillary from reaching the White House, then no force in the world can.
Matt Brigg’s takes a pretty long look at Cirillo and Taleb’s new paper, “On the tail risk of violent conflict and its underestimation” and asks Are Wars And Violence Decreasing? Also his Gay-conversion Therapy Bans And The Origin Of Homosexual was a great bit of, if I might permitted to say, “neoreactionary” thinking.
Over at The Orthosphere, Dr. Thomas Bertonneau recycles an old, but highly relevant essay Plotinus and Augustine on Gnosticism, adding substantial updates for 2015. Gnosticism never seems to go quite so out of style as combating it does.
Kristor catches Coca-Cola in the act of holiness signaling. The trite slogan “We choose happiness over tradition” does violence not only to tradition, but substantial violence to meaningful happiness as well. As we like to say, “Not even wrong.” This was good: Truth is a King—i.e., truth is fact is accomplished action, and therefore sovereign.
Bonald makes one of his too infrequent appearances at The Orthosphere to go meta and ask Is the Orthosphere part of a larger whole? He thinks not, but along the way well articulates where Orthosphere sits in relations to other rightist movements. Based Bonald.
Over at his home blog, Bonald considers The spread of Leftism: What if it’s the other way around? What if, in other words, students are driving the education system leftwards? I have my doubts. But it is an interesting question to ponder. Also this bit of Catholic introspection was good:
Just beefing up on the specific content of Christian morality, though, wouldn’t solve the basic problem. The basic problem is that Christianity is not fundamentally about morality. Of course, it does have necessary consequences for our moral duties, but the core of the message is God revealed in Jesus Christ.
No cult, no culture. Also from Bonald: “the asymmetry here is rational”.
Thrasymacus has a nice post up about how Abraham Lincoln Invented White Privilege.
Real Gary has a video and some commentary on Serbia’s hate-hate relationship with the EU. Gary is also my go-to source for Episcopalian news. Not actually joking about that. Episcopalianism is as near the centroid of mainstream American progressivism as you can possibly get. It’s the NPR of American religious life. (Except for NPR.) Also some interesting commentary and video on Mudsill Theory & the Baltimore Riots.
Ted Colt has a few anecdotes with which he makes, I think, some meaning.
Kakistocracy goes behind the scenes to explore what’s up with a spate of White Sex Offenders in NY State. In other news, Duke University’s Jerry Hough’s insufficiently anti-racist straight talk is called a “micro-noose”. LOL. Also: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make liberal.
Newcomer Damsel Magdalena Raymond Montilla shares a great deal of her family’s history in On Patrimony: Introduction and The Family Home.
Dante has breaking coverage of Michael Anissimov’s penultimate public mental breakdown. And the final one. I take no joy from this, the inexorable conclusion that Anissimov cannot be trusted whatsoever. Rule #1. It exists for a reason.
Welp that’s all I had time for. Til next Sunday night or Monday morning or so… Keep on Reactin’! TRP… Over and Out!!
Wow, assimov is mad. Lol, not even worth capitalizing. Neoreaction respects high class and mike, you aren’t that. Being rejected was good for you, maybe you will learn some humility.
As far as my post goes, I wasn’t trying to say open minded is a logical fallacy per se. Open minded is a plus in my opinion and a discussion purely on that topic is exactly the sort of thing that should be respected. My problem is when it is used to derail discussions on other subjects. It is unacceptable to tactically use that topic to turn an argument from a loss to a “win.” It is merely a distraction that losers engage in when faced with a challenge they can’t overcome.
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yeah atavis, I have habit of mischarachterizing/missummarizing you. sorry bout that. you should take that as a compliment. you are complex. I’ll update when I geert a chance.
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