After reading Tara Burton's review of Kingsnorth's book, I also don't plan on checking it out. Seems like too much noble savagery, too little faith in human creativity.
Also, now it's hard to believe I ever considered going Orthodox. Here in Waco, I've taken to congregating with the Anglicans, because their music is very beautiful—way better than what I call the Tejano Drum 'n' Bass Rite at the Catholic parishes. And they reliably share the wine.
I think there are people who are pacifiers, who are actually subconsciously for depopulation, eradication of nations, and 15 minute cities, diversity (WEF speak for portfolios), equity (WEF speak for private equity), inclusion (which etymologically means imprisonment), replacement of the Judeo-Christian w/ this cult, which is one of total control, but more than anything, one of anti-fertility. So they want us all to turn away, on Circe's Island, to lotus eating as you say, or get lost in the poppy field in the Wizard of Oz, as you say. Sometimes it is hard to tell who is a pacifier and who is protecting their family and livelihood from attack, but there are very sophisticated pacifiers. Our great grandchildren will be enslaved, spiritually, cognitively, and physically if we do not fight, and who are these dark triad hideous possessed people to tell us how the world should be? We are in the Wasteland, and must find the Grail question, as the soils are barren, women are barren, minds and creativity are barren, human flourishing is off the cliff, and the pacifiers fiddle proverbially while Rome burns. We and our children will end up in 15 minute caliphates w/ Larry Ellison, the Westworld clone undertaker surveilling our every breath. The West and the Judeo-Christian tradition are the great majestic rooted tree, and there can be no creativity or flourishing without that Father, that boundary, even if it only acts as a catalyst for rebellion and return. I used to get so pissed off about Christ figures all through literature, and now I am deeply thankful for that, and feel like that is my ground, though I crawl around blind and demented on it, like Lear, but I agree entirely with you, though I think the battle may be a hundred years war.
I think the fight is in building those parallel polis Michael Martin talks about. Because when you fight the system and it starts to crumble, something has to be there to cushion the fall.
Yes this. To build secret gardens, and knighthoods to defend them and the children playing by the fountains. And keep the gardens secrets, localize and recruit gardeners/knights by using secret phrases, "I didn't take the booster" or "Funny how none of the muslims here are actually refugees"
"The West and the Judeo-Christian tradition are the great majestic rooted tree, and there can be no creativity or flourishing without that Father, that boundary, even if it only acts as a catalyst for rebellion and return."
Do you think staying rooted in myth/stories (perhaps the *only* places that can perfectly balance the two energies you describe here) gives us real dynamism to not become too dogmatic in knighthood or too dogmatic in retreating? At least spiritually and more intuitively aware?
I would say “rooted in imagination and in the Real,” which would include myth/stories but also stuff like craftsmanship, making art, chopping wood, hunting, and stuff like that
I had a completely different reading of the end of "Morte" though I like your cosplay aside. It's all cosplay, isn't it? Judith Butler would be proud of you...
But I digress. I read the "knights into priests" as a continuation of their loyalty to Arthur. Arthur shook off this mortal coil, gallumphing into the spiritual realm (presumably with Patsy in tow clunking coconut shells together). The living knights did their best to follow suit taking up a spiritual life. Toxic religiosity if anything maybe.
St. Therese promoted the little way which in light of current trends looks more important than ever. The big institutions appear to be failing, ships of fools, EU, NATO, Russia, etc. I like my bishop but when was the last time that anything really good came from lots of bishops getting together. The big cannot save us, it is the little farm and the happy family. The out of the way poet, not well known, still writing. It is a small flock of sheep well cared for somewhere. The hidden things, like the Holy Family, quietly making a way to Bethlehem. I love Christmas and all of the little varied ways of celebrating it. That is what I am focused on right now. We are not all gong to be able to settle on a farm like the one Mike has. We need to build our own little organic alternative in the corner where we are. And wait for our Christmas to come.
Amen, brother -- I feel this. Relatedly, I recently read this classic gem of a paragraph by Gilbert Murray, quoted in a book not so well written : "Anyone who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not specifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics and Mithras-worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of self-confidence, of hope in life and of faith in normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of spiritual emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve" --- a set of attitudes which I would now maybe just call emotional immaturity, and which Orthodoxy has preserved, enshrined, enthroned, amplified, eternalized, valorized in every aspect of its cultic life. And now I find this whole post-Christian daydreamy neo-Orthodox world of "Well, it's really just Western Christianity that's the problem" to be so utterly uninteresting, so beside the point. We have new worlds to create together, let's get on with it.
"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" sounds like all the people who protest, in Europe, against the juicy crimes in Paleandshine, who would never protest in defence of European cultures and if they start talking spirituality are either budists or a soft sufist version that is basically just budism with an exotic element of submission
There is something almost Ahrimanic about the way the online intelligentsia keep trying to capture and hold our attention. Constant intellectual masturbation over ideas, doomsaying and navel gazing. Never anything about solutions. Nothing from their own lives and how to live. That would be bad because then people will go outside, form bonds of communion and rarely check back in to keep those youtube counts up, subscriber fees going etc. Unwittingly, they end up serving as another form of entrapment in Kingsnorth's machine.
This is why I enjoy your work. YOU LIVE IT. I respect and admire you tremendously for this. Being a typical millennial Pisces dreamer, I have been moved to action but at a much higher level. You have my thanks.
As for Western Civilization, the kids will be alright in the end. Nothing good comes without a bit of suffering. Christ is at our side sharing in it. The doom on the horizon hides a new dawn behind it. Wish we could avoid it but better God puts us through the ringer than abandon his Great Human Experiment altogether. And I think God sparing us the doom is tantamount to an admission we simply will never be able to hack it. Look at how Blake died and what he sacrificed to stay true. I have it easy.
I agree--was at the Erasmus Lecture in person. I am glad he left off Wiccan or whatever he had been but he is still kind of a newbie to Orthodoxy and brings almost a Puritanical view of things. He has also carried over a little of the environmentalist view that the human is the problem.
I really had to get the brain cells firing for this one - thank you for the mental stretch and for the corroboration of what I have come to realise over the past few years: While it was understandable and perhaps necessary to have the knee-jerk doomsday / end-of-the-world reaction to the unveiling of 'The Agenda' in 2020, we've had plenty of time since, to put on the Big Girl / Boy pants since and find ways to stand up to the machine, not necessarily with a sword, but through living real lives in the here and now, which is what creates culture.
On this island (which I believe Paul Kingsnorth now calls 'home'), there are many people doing just that but doomers (who shout louder than ordinary folk living their lives) would give the impression that the Irish are all dead, victims of an invasion by Global Inc. The thing is though, invasions come and go. Ordinary people still live their lives. Some of them even tell stories, write songs, or paint pictures about it all... And as the Wolfe Tones' song goes: "You'll never beat the Irish".
To give in fully to doom is to admit you'll take no part in a miracle.
Getting on the doomer train is a one-way ticket to self-fulfilling prophecy
After reading Tara Burton's review of Kingsnorth's book, I also don't plan on checking it out. Seems like too much noble savagery, too little faith in human creativity.
https://thedispatch.com/article/kingsnorth-book-machine-modernity/
Also, now it's hard to believe I ever considered going Orthodox. Here in Waco, I've taken to congregating with the Anglicans, because their music is very beautiful—way better than what I call the Tejano Drum 'n' Bass Rite at the Catholic parishes. And they reliably share the wine.
I think there are people who are pacifiers, who are actually subconsciously for depopulation, eradication of nations, and 15 minute cities, diversity (WEF speak for portfolios), equity (WEF speak for private equity), inclusion (which etymologically means imprisonment), replacement of the Judeo-Christian w/ this cult, which is one of total control, but more than anything, one of anti-fertility. So they want us all to turn away, on Circe's Island, to lotus eating as you say, or get lost in the poppy field in the Wizard of Oz, as you say. Sometimes it is hard to tell who is a pacifier and who is protecting their family and livelihood from attack, but there are very sophisticated pacifiers. Our great grandchildren will be enslaved, spiritually, cognitively, and physically if we do not fight, and who are these dark triad hideous possessed people to tell us how the world should be? We are in the Wasteland, and must find the Grail question, as the soils are barren, women are barren, minds and creativity are barren, human flourishing is off the cliff, and the pacifiers fiddle proverbially while Rome burns. We and our children will end up in 15 minute caliphates w/ Larry Ellison, the Westworld clone undertaker surveilling our every breath. The West and the Judeo-Christian tradition are the great majestic rooted tree, and there can be no creativity or flourishing without that Father, that boundary, even if it only acts as a catalyst for rebellion and return. I used to get so pissed off about Christ figures all through literature, and now I am deeply thankful for that, and feel like that is my ground, though I crawl around blind and demented on it, like Lear, but I agree entirely with you, though I think the battle may be a hundred years war.
I think the fight is in building those parallel polis Michael Martin talks about. Because when you fight the system and it starts to crumble, something has to be there to cushion the fall.
Yes this. To build secret gardens, and knighthoods to defend them and the children playing by the fountains. And keep the gardens secrets, localize and recruit gardeners/knights by using secret phrases, "I didn't take the booster" or "Funny how none of the muslims here are actually refugees"
Sadly, at the rate we are hollowing ourselves out, you may only need to speak one word to show you can enter: Love.
No but I am not joking
It may, indeed.
Yes (I cannot "like" replies on articles)
(Also, yes, except the Judeo-Christian)
Not sure I understand this bit:
"The West and the Judeo-Christian tradition are the great majestic rooted tree, and there can be no creativity or flourishing without that Father, that boundary, even if it only acts as a catalyst for rebellion and return."
Return to what?
The genesis of everything, the boom.
Yes, The Philokalia/ The Way of the Pilgrim model of Godliness doesn’t impress me for a number of reasons.
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-165222743?r=1nm0v2&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
Michael, when will you learn that you'd be happier if you were miserable?
World Party's Ship of Fools reminded me of Put the Message in a Box
https://youtu.be/DXDJbqws3MY?si=c5ZSYpaj5vQhYPtN
another one of my favorites!
Not sure if this connects but…
Do you think staying rooted in myth/stories (perhaps the *only* places that can perfectly balance the two energies you describe here) gives us real dynamism to not become too dogmatic in knighthood or too dogmatic in retreating? At least spiritually and more intuitively aware?
I would say “rooted in imagination and in the Real,” which would include myth/stories but also stuff like craftsmanship, making art, chopping wood, hunting, and stuff like that
Thank you! Very interesting.
Giambattista Vico (weird how nobody talks about him. I found him in an article on an entreporeneur page)
I had a completely different reading of the end of "Morte" though I like your cosplay aside. It's all cosplay, isn't it? Judith Butler would be proud of you...
But I digress. I read the "knights into priests" as a continuation of their loyalty to Arthur. Arthur shook off this mortal coil, gallumphing into the spiritual realm (presumably with Patsy in tow clunking coconut shells together). The living knights did their best to follow suit taking up a spiritual life. Toxic religiosity if anything maybe.
St. Therese promoted the little way which in light of current trends looks more important than ever. The big institutions appear to be failing, ships of fools, EU, NATO, Russia, etc. I like my bishop but when was the last time that anything really good came from lots of bishops getting together. The big cannot save us, it is the little farm and the happy family. The out of the way poet, not well known, still writing. It is a small flock of sheep well cared for somewhere. The hidden things, like the Holy Family, quietly making a way to Bethlehem. I love Christmas and all of the little varied ways of celebrating it. That is what I am focused on right now. We are not all gong to be able to settle on a farm like the one Mike has. We need to build our own little organic alternative in the corner where we are. And wait for our Christmas to come.
Amen, brother -- I feel this. Relatedly, I recently read this classic gem of a paragraph by Gilbert Murray, quoted in a book not so well written : "Anyone who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not specifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics and Mithras-worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of self-confidence, of hope in life and of faith in normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of spiritual emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve" --- a set of attitudes which I would now maybe just call emotional immaturity, and which Orthodoxy has preserved, enshrined, enthroned, amplified, eternalized, valorized in every aspect of its cultic life. And now I find this whole post-Christian daydreamy neo-Orthodox world of "Well, it's really just Western Christianity that's the problem" to be so utterly uninteresting, so beside the point. We have new worlds to create together, let's get on with it.
Let's get on with it, indeed.
"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" sounds like all the people who protest, in Europe, against the juicy crimes in Paleandshine, who would never protest in defence of European cultures and if they start talking spirituality are either budists or a soft sufist version that is basically just budism with an exotic element of submission
There is something almost Ahrimanic about the way the online intelligentsia keep trying to capture and hold our attention. Constant intellectual masturbation over ideas, doomsaying and navel gazing. Never anything about solutions. Nothing from their own lives and how to live. That would be bad because then people will go outside, form bonds of communion and rarely check back in to keep those youtube counts up, subscriber fees going etc. Unwittingly, they end up serving as another form of entrapment in Kingsnorth's machine.
This is why I enjoy your work. YOU LIVE IT. I respect and admire you tremendously for this. Being a typical millennial Pisces dreamer, I have been moved to action but at a much higher level. You have my thanks.
As for Western Civilization, the kids will be alright in the end. Nothing good comes without a bit of suffering. Christ is at our side sharing in it. The doom on the horizon hides a new dawn behind it. Wish we could avoid it but better God puts us through the ringer than abandon his Great Human Experiment altogether. And I think God sparing us the doom is tantamount to an admission we simply will never be able to hack it. Look at how Blake died and what he sacrificed to stay true. I have it easy.
Thanks a lot, Adrian
I agree--was at the Erasmus Lecture in person. I am glad he left off Wiccan or whatever he had been but he is still kind of a newbie to Orthodoxy and brings almost a Puritanical view of things. He has also carried over a little of the environmentalist view that the human is the problem.
Well stated
I really had to get the brain cells firing for this one - thank you for the mental stretch and for the corroboration of what I have come to realise over the past few years: While it was understandable and perhaps necessary to have the knee-jerk doomsday / end-of-the-world reaction to the unveiling of 'The Agenda' in 2020, we've had plenty of time since, to put on the Big Girl / Boy pants since and find ways to stand up to the machine, not necessarily with a sword, but through living real lives in the here and now, which is what creates culture.
On this island (which I believe Paul Kingsnorth now calls 'home'), there are many people doing just that but doomers (who shout louder than ordinary folk living their lives) would give the impression that the Irish are all dead, victims of an invasion by Global Inc. The thing is though, invasions come and go. Ordinary people still live their lives. Some of them even tell stories, write songs, or paint pictures about it all... And as the Wolfe Tones' song goes: "You'll never beat the Irish".