Why I Can't Get on the Doomer Train

Stop Whining about Western Civilization Already

Reginald Savage, “The Lotos-Eaters,” Dial No. 3 (1893)

HEADS UP: Next weekend I will be speaking at Southeastuary 2025: “Even so, come! An Invitation to Dialogos” in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. You can check it out here.

There was a time when I would get really excited about a new post by Paul Kingsnorth, especially during the early days of This Our Covid when he started writing the essays recently complied and, one would assume, revised in his new book Against the Machine. If I am not mistaken, that was around the time, or not long after, of his entrance into the Orthodox Church. But he still had a fire in his belly then. I assume that fire had something to do not only with the insanity being perpetrated on what used to be called Western Civilization by the likes of the World Economic Forum and the other gangsters who were then pushing vaccine passports, fifteen-minute cities, and, as has become all too clear as of late, central bank digital currencies and digital ID, the (not so secret) secret weapon for the eventual total control and absolute surveillance of the global population. As any of my readers will no doubt know, Kingsnorth’s aims at that time (and in his book) hold great congruence with my own—and I was writing about these things as early as 2017 while preparing my book Transfiguration. But that was then; this is now.

I don’t plan on reading Kingsnorth’s book, though have read his Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, which I like quite a bit. I kind of soured on Kingsnorth’s project about a year ago, when he delivered his Erasmus Lecture, “Against Christian Civilization,” for First Things. At the time, I was driving back home to Michigan from Idaho and, since I had some time on my hands, was listening to podcasts and lectures and, since I tend to agree with Kingsnorth about a lot of things, tried to give this one a listen. I tried, that is, but was unsuccessful. It was just full of the doomeriest doomerism and textbook Orthodox grousing about “the West” that I couldn’t make my way through it. Apparently, my friend Sebastian Morello had a similar reaction and spoke about it on his excellent Gnostalgia podcast, though it seems Kingsnorth got rather offended by what I thought were some valid criticisms. The zeal for my father’s house and so forth. I tried to give the lecture a second chance this past week…and I still couldn’t make it to the end.

Now, having spent so much of my life in and around higher education, I am more than used to the cultured despisers ripping on Western Civilization as some overarching evil—which, for some reason, extends to Boomers. As an undergrad, I remember taking a course on Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald (which I loved) and listening to one of my fat, feminist, lesbian classmates kvetch about “Dead White Males” and trash-talk the Western Canon (which is basically what Kingsnorth is doing—but in a holier way). Promoted as it is by colleges and universities across the West (and particularly—and ironically—in the humanities) that attitude permeates our current civilizational decline. And it’s bullshit.

Boomers get blamed for everything.

Even my friend, Guido Preparata—and he is my friend—has said to me at least a couple of times that he would be willing to sacrifice Mozart (I think it was Mozart) in order to not have all of the wickedness in which the West has been complicit. As much as I love Guido, I do not share his sentiment. As far as I’m concerned, great art, great culture (and this includes what is best in religion) doesn’t occur because of the wickedness of the world but despite it. As someone with Irish ancestry, as much as I despise the cruelties of the British Empire, I am not willing to give up Shakespeare, Keats, Blake, the Beatles, or Fairport Convention because some kings or prime ministers were assholes. And I always have Caliban to fall back on: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how to curse.” But I can’t get with the doomerism.

What I see in Kingsnorth is a variety of the lotos eaters in the Odyssey: guys who eat the lotos and get blissed out to the point they don’t want to do anything. It’s an image of spiritual narcissism: “I’m good with the gods, man. Back off and let me enjoy the buzz.” It’s a common phenomenon, and can be seen in texts such as The Way of a Pilgrim (why doesn’t that guy just get a job?) or Richard Rolle’s The Fire of Love, among many others. Odysseus’s men who partake of the lotos lose all of their initiative, all of their drive and heroism. They just hang out at Starbucks or the comic book store drinking one soy latte after another. (As an aside, I think “lotos-eaterism” might be a more widespread danger as Neptune travels through Aries from now until March 2039.)

Another analogy—and an apt and very tragic one—comes at the end of Morte Darthur. After the Battle of Camlann and Arthur departs to Avalon to be healed of his wounds, the remaining Knights of the Round Table all lose their sense of self. They don’t know who they are anymore. Lancelot becomes a priest, many of the other knights become monks. They’ve given up on chivalry, given up on the quest, given up on their true vocations while they cosplay at another. Some might celebrate this rejection of knighthood, this image of “toxic masculinity,” which is also, as far as I’m concerned, a rejection of the will needed to transform culture and to civilize the world. It’s an image of cultural ennui and every kind of impotence. Did I mention sperm counts are down catastrophically?

I hope everyone picked up that my examples are from Western/Christian Civilization.

Also: I hate quitters.