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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26200 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I think this passage from a recent Sam Kriss newsletter on the backlash to "trad" stuff and religiosity he sees brewing is an accurate forecast of the response to these sort of critiques.

I am not an atheist. But I can tell when there’s a gap in the market a mile wide. This year, we’ll see the first stirrings of something new. It will, of course, involve a rejection of God and an incredulity towards religious ideas, along with a contempt for mass-market mysticism: manifesting, angel numbers, that sort of thing. But while the last atheist project took religious ideas on face value, as propositional claims about the existence of a supreme being, this one won’t be able to. Because so many of the most prominent believers now are like Ayaan Hirsi Ali: they don’t believe in God, not really, but they do believe in their own need for belief. There’s a new dogma, which holds that the experience of modernity has left us utterly lost, without any meaningful narratives to make sense of our lives, without any meaningful communities to support us, cut off from the deep riches of the past, abstracted from the earth and its cycles, from procreation and childrearing, even alienated from our own gender, stuck in a technological daydream, alone… I might have made a few observations in this vein myself. But the next atheism will have little time for this sort of whingeing. Sorry, it will reply, but all that anomie is just another word for freedom. We have been liberated from necessity. We have overcome our biology. Modernity is amazing. And of course freedom has its dangers; there are always some people who’ll end up addicted to dumb pleasures, or wandering in circles, or paralysed in fear of the open sky. But it’s still better to be a wild animal than an animal in a cage, and this pining after lost certainties is just the cry of an animal who can’t make it in the wild, desperate to be put back in its cage. No dice, bitch! The glory and the tragedy of our existential condition is that we are condemned to be free! And then, in about seven or eight years, this argument will be another smug flatulent dogma. Another seven or eight years after that, and religion will come back. For reasons that must remain mysterious to us, this is how God has chosen to regulate our affairs.

His hypothetical critic's view of this sort of talk strikes me as accurate. People used to a captivity of sorts freaking out over the prospect of choosing what to do with one's life and find one's own meaning for it rather than having someone else pick it for you, now that the old shackles that restricted the lives of prior generations have rusted through in some areas so some may slip out of them and go their own way. IME having lived in the kind of strict traditionalist religious rural community that many aspiring trads seem to salivate over, in such worlds there are no shortages of people with badly managed mental health problems damaging themselves and others.

His hypothetical critic's view of this sort of talk strikes me as accurate.

To me it feels like seeing a commercial for a brand that hasn't been stocked on shelves for decades. I'm sorry, where is all this liberation? Who are all these people who believe freedom is more important than safety? Our society is full of surveillance and control over even the pettiest aspects of our lives, how am I supposed to take any of this talk about "living in the wild" seriously?

nothing says "living in the wild" like living in a welfare state, these people live in another reality alright.

Not gonna lie, you had me until you concluded with "But there are also crazy people in conservative communities."

There sure are. I didn't say they're weren't. In fact, I explicitly said that replacing some religious informed traditional models of society could be good, bad, or mixed. I am not actually a reactionary. I did say, however, that a void (which your post in the quote of Sam Kriss does an excellent job of illustrating) is a bad thing.

Let me reemphasize: I am not advocating for a snap-back return to pre-1869 western societal structures.

When you say "People used to a captivity of sorts freaking out over the prospect of choosing what to do with one's life and find one's own meaning for it rather than having someone else pick it for you, now that the old shackles that restricted the lives of prior generations have rusted through in some areas so some may slip out of them and go their own way," I think you're, first, minimizing the self-determination that conservative / traditional folks still do (I would say, must) exercise. Second, and much more importantly, people "going their own way" is often not benign. An eccentric hermit who spends his days writing in the nude on his own property is a far cry from the paranoid-schizophrenic so detached from reality that he puts a bystander into a position that could cost the latter his freedom.

To me, this is a kind of unrealistic libertarianism. "You just do you. I'll do me. The rest is fine" falls apart pretty damn fast if we believe that extra-judicial violence is bad, public goods exist, and contract law is ... a thing. But, hey, I'm probably just afraid of that level of freedom.

Not gonna lie, you had me until you concluded with "But there are also crazy people in conservative communities."

To clarify, that was addressed towards the linked Tyler Cowan discussion saying that he didn't know of a better argument for social conservatism than that book.

I think you're, first, minimizing the self-determination that conservative / traditional folks still do (I would say, must) exercise.

Please clarify on what you mean. I have noticed a disproportionate number rightist mottizens seem to be from left wing areas, especially progressive urban areas of the California, the Pacific Northwest or New England, and having broken with a default worldview of left liberalism see rightism as an independent minded rebellious choice of sorts, with very few being from hard conservative areas where right wing views, religious zeal, strict men's dominance over women, etc are the default majority worldviews and having those is a matter of inheritance and conformity with ones surroundings, with left views being the break. If you mean self-determination in the break with the surroundings sense, that could explain it.

Second, and much more importantly, people "going their own way" is often not benign. An eccentric hermit who spends his days writing in the nude on his own property is a far cry from the paranoid-schizophrenic so detached from reality that he puts a bystander into a position that could cost the latter his freedom.

The examples given mention traditional social structures, expectations, etc. Think more secularism rather than going to church, or having equal division of labor in a relationship versus traditional gender dynamics more than the mentally ill yelling about little green men on the sidewalk.

To me, this is a kind of unrealistic libertarianism. "You just do you. I'll do me. The rest is fine" falls apart pretty damn fast if we believe that extra-judicial violence is bad, public goods exist, and contract law is ... a thing. But, hey, I'm probably just afraid of that level of freedom.

I'd characterize it more as a previous set of man-made structures having grown rickety and eventually collapsed as the winds and rains rolled through, incapable of withstanding the challenges of the changing climate, with some people pining for the old building styles that can't handle the new weather now while there's also an explosion of people fiddling with different building styles and materials to see what man-made structures work for them and hold up, which crumple, and so on. And at the same time, you have areas where the old man-made structures haven't been challenged by weather changes yet and still are standing. The fracture of the old structures in some areas giving the opening for better ones to be developed.

To clarify, that was addressed towards the linked Tyler Cowan discussion saying that he didn't know of a better argument for social conservatism than that book.

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying. Cowan is weird too in that he seems to be broadly ambivalent about social politics most of the time and then will come out with things like this from left field. I mean, Blake Butler is very very into experimental prose territory. I was surprise Cowan had Butler's new book on his radar whatsoever (come to think of it .... was probably just the New Yorker review. Cowan is an O.G. haute-couture literary type)

Please clarify on what you mean. I have noticed a disproportionate number rightist mottizens seem to be from left wing areas, especially progressive urban areas of the California, the Pacific Northwest or New England, and having broken with a default worldview of left liberalism see rightism as an independent minded rebellious choice of sorts, with very few being from hard conservative areas where right wing views, religious zeal, strict men's dominance over women, etc are the default majority worldviews and having those is a matter of inheritance and conformity with ones surroundings, with left views being the break.

Currently live in a "hard conservative" area in the Old Confederacy. I was responding to your initial assertion regarding conservatives / traditionalists living a life that had already been mapped out for them (or something to that effect - I'd direct quote, but I'm in a weird spot with the editor and afraid of losing my comment here). The problem is that trying to live that "mapped out" life is very difficult to impossible even in "hard conservative" areas. What's far more common is public displays of fealty to those old ideals, paired with a sort of domestic realpolitik wherein family structures are far more modern (and post modern) than folks want to admit. Here's a neato example. If you really want to live in an actual conservative/traditional directed life, you have to make that choice everyday.

If you mean self-determination in the break with the surroundings sense, that could explain it.

Broadly, this.

The examples given mention traditional social structures, expectations, etc. Think more secularism rather than going to church, or having equal division of labor in a relationship versus traditional gender dynamics more than the mentally ill yelling about little green men on the sidewalk.

The former leads to the latter. They're inextricably linked. Lorenzo Warby's masterwork "Worshipping the Future" demonstrates this (and is engrossing it is readablility)

I'd characterize it more as a previous set of man-made structures having grown rickety and eventually collapsed as the winds and rains rolled through, incapable of withstanding the challenges of the changing climate, with some people pining for the old building styles that can't handle the new weather now while there's also an explosion of people fiddling with different building styles and materials to see what man-made structures work for them and hold up, which crumple, and so on. And at the same time, you have areas where the old man-made structures haven't been challenged by weather changes yet and still are standing. The fracture of the old structures in some areas giving the opening for better ones to be developed.

Awesome extended metaphor, but I got lost. I don't understand what you are saying.

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