The Very Best of Last Week in Reaction (2016/05/22)

“Ça ira” is an emblematic song of the French Revolution, first heard in May 1790.

Last week’s TWiR is up at Social Matter. A record-setting week in number of words I think (~6900) and a record-setting number of honorees. The “Official” Honor Roll is as follows:

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Honorable Mentions:

Intellectual Detox: Inequality, Bargaining Power, and Startups. Examines business profitability as a necessary balance between genuine wealth creation and critical node capture, eschewing the pitfalls as viewing it necessarily as either on or the other. This motivates a discussion about the just distribution of wealth wherein at least we are asking questions that make sense.

Mark Yuray: Why Homosexuals Are A Signalling Hazard In Traditional Societies. Yuray shows how the “Hermeneutic of Gay Suspicion”, by sexualizing fundamentally non-sexual relationships, threatens normal and healthy male relationships.

Dave Hoffman: Social Failure And Market Success. Behind obviously degenerate uses of material technology, there are tell-tale failures of social technology to encourage human agents to avoid degenerate uses.

Ryan Landry: Never Announce Your Intentions. Don’t paint a target on your back and here’s what happens when you do.

P. T. Carlo: Francis Fukuyama’s dream of the 90’s. A summary and critique of Fukuyama’s End of History thesis and why it’s on life support today.

Testis Gratus: Degeneracy and Improvement. A motivation and definition for Natural Law and how people (and societies) get really screwed up when they ignore it.

Bonald: Do creative people usually accept the official beliefs of their society? Creative people, like everyone else, generally accept the official “truth” of their society whether it’s true or not. Good story-telling however requires actual truth, not just “official” truth. Thus creative people these days tend to tell the truth, despite their officially expressed beliefs.

Cato the Younger: Cultivating Internal Order Among The Chaos. The contrast between revolution and chaos on one hand, and reaction and order on the other could not be more stark. Right order begins in human soul, in the pursuit of virtue from the ground up.

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… And the Winners Are:

Mind Category:

Raymond Brannen: Inference With The Vampire. A thousand year-old vampire, independent, master manipulator, on no slavish devotee to fashion, would be a great source of basic advice about the world. Brannen shows how we can approximate that expertise without risking excessive loss of blood.

Soul Category:

Nydwracu: Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira. A deep exposé, in the form of a rant, of the deep insecurities of lesser Brahmin functionaries and how that translates into seething hatred, barely disguised, for the white working class people, especially intelligent ones of that clade.

Heart Category:

Mark Citadel: Don’t Wait on the Church. A profound meditation on the nature of the Church and how, in its feminine nature, cannot be expected to spearhead the restoration of society without great violence to itself. Magisterial and I think canon-worthy. Says Citadel:

The monarchy is the male guardian of the Church;
Her rape begins when his reign ends.