Category: Culture

LXV – Cultural Acidity

Kristor has an excellent article over at Orthosphere. I recommend reading it in full. He asks: Is Traditional culture even possible anymore? He expands on this at length. My response to him, as usual, was long enough to be its own post so I am reposting it here.

You posted this during my mental blue-hour where i can’t distinguish between exhaustion or mental acuity, so you’re getting a prompt reply, and i’ll issue my regrets in hindsight.

Three points which combined I think form some kind of answer to your question.
1- Tradition is (rather, can be) a moving reference point.
2- Bad Ideas thrive where good men fail to scorn them.
3- Culture is prone to cycles, but they don’t appear to be gradual but rather precipitous preference cascades.

1: Tradition, as you mean it above, I take to mean “The mores and methods that informed a lively and thriving past society, and which if adhered to today could enliven and revive our present society.” You may also mean a specific set of mores and methods. You might also mean, more simply, that the way we used to live is preferable to the way we live now.

So, the acid of cheap information eats at all tradition indiscriminately, true. I will push your metaphor to the limit: Acid can in some cases, dissolve rust off of a nail or dissolve the nail entirely. It’s yet to be seen whether cheap information will destroy all of society or just the parts that aren’t helping it.

You say:

the internet is systematically pushing all human cultures ever more toward the Cult and Culture of Death.

I argue that the culture of death has traditions of its own which are eaten away by cheap information of the productive kind. Your comment reminds me of this quote from Abraham Lincolns Lyceum address:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Indeed, the culture of death is cultural suicide. So long as some men remain dedicated to a culture of life, they will win in the long game. I turn to scripture: In Exodus, after Moses came down from the mountain and found his people worshiping the Golden Bull, he ground it up and made them eat it, then murdered about 3,000 of his own people. It took him 40 years in the desert and many hardships like that one to learn his lesson, but those who worshiped the culture of death, successfully found death. Those who worshiped hope and life successfully found hope and life. The desert need not be limited to so short a time as 40 years.

2: Cheap information has brought the primordial soup of ideas to a boil. Presently society scorns things like “tradition” and “self deprivation” and “theism” and “monogamy”. By their fruits ye shall know them, and the fruits of our society are death and despair. It is not the fruit of the Orthospherian Culture. Society is not scorning things, at present, which it ought to. You recognize this when you say:

Viz., the Democrats are looking pretty doggone stupid right now, to anyone with the foggiest notion of how things work in the real world. It’s comical. Laughter is the best medicine for that disease

We ought to, and do, in our circle, scorn the bad ideas which cheap information allows to multiply. Scorn works like an inoculation: We become aware of, and thus immune to, the acid eating away at society and thus remove ourselves from the equation. Vaccine protection works by group-protection. We may be an isolated cluster protected in a vast unvaccinated population, but that population does not have our longevity and is not aided by our isolated inoculation.

Thus cheap information enables us to identify and dutifully scorn those ideas which deserve it, and while we ourselves may receive scorn, our ideas are not leading us inexorably to destruction.

3: I openly acknowledge it is my generation, we millennial, which have trademarked nihilism and made it a defining trait. What nostalgia will we have? What “traditions” will they lay claim to? An extreme case, perhaps, but consider the Tinder phenomenon: “Ahh, yes, I had so many partners back in the day.” Will they consider that healthy and socially profitable? What will their children think of such stories?

I believe in the cyclical nature of society. I believe that the children of hedonists become traditionalists. I believe, perhaps vainly, that the children whose parents are mutilating them due to a fad induced by social indifference to gender dysmorphia, will have a fascinating story to tell when they are 18, 25, 40, years old. I do not believe, perhaps naively, that it will be favorable to their parents decisions. I further believe that we are already seeing signs of this in the generation following mine, Gen Z.

Therefore: Eventually, a disease hits the population which only the inoculated are prepared for, and it sweeps through with violent force. A preference Cascade, which you’ve discussed before. And then, we will be on the side of the majority, heaping scorn on the ideas which are deleterious to society. And, with the benefit of hindsight and cheap information, perhaps we will do so in a way that has longevity and strengthen that society, whatever it looks like.

and so! To specifically answer your questions:

Is it possible, under such conditions, for *any tradition whatsoever* to perdure?

Yes, indeed I believe it is inevitable that tradition, including and especially tradition informed by Catholic morals and teachings, can perdure.

How would a society that had reacted radically against the perverse and pervasive subscendence of global “culture” need to be organized in order to immunize itself from the sly soft constant subtle alluring attacks of the Cult and Culture of Death?

I don’t think any change in structure needs to happen. I think cheap information cuts both ways, and when the majority of society scorns the “Turkish Delight” found on the internet, consumption will decrease. The danger will always be there: The forbidden fruit, after all, was from the tree of knowledge. Cheap Information being the acid of society is simply an acknowledgement of original sin. It takes self mortification and diligence to work against it, to say nothing of the heavy doses of Gods grace and mercy we require.

AMDG

LXIII – On Facebook

Scoot Blogger

Max Barry is one of my favorite authors. I was introduced to him by way of the online game Nation States back in the early 2000’s, and then decided to read the book that inspired it, Jennifer Government. I loved it, and I love all his books, I recommend them all. He’s got a new one coming in 2020, I’m going to buy it. I don’t even know what it’s about.

Jennifer Government is a “Capitalizt” answer to 1984. Corporations run the world, and governments are mewling and weak and ineffective. Employees take the name of their employer: John Nike, Buy Mitsui, Jennifer Government. Corporations formed “loyalty programs” that became so extreme that they became territorial, and the worlds conflicts are fought between American Airlines, McDonalds, and Nike vs. United Airlines, Burger King, and Adidas.

Wired has an article out that is making waves, because it describes Facebook as behaving like a country. It’s got easily 1 billion+ unique users, it’s got corporate partnerships with dozens of organizations, and most recently it just released it’s own currency.

It’s the ultimate loyalty program: When you control the money, you can control not just where it gets spent, but how it gets spent. This is a logical move for Facebook, to exploit a regulatory void for it’s own benefit.

Dystopia

The frustrating thing about Social Media is that it is absolutely within our control. I left social media platforms in 2014. Someone once described social media by the seven deadly sins, and I think it’s fairly accurate:

  • Lust – Tinder
  • Gluttony – Grub Hub
  • Greed – Linkedin
  • Sloth – Netflix
  • Wrath – Twitter
  • Envy – Facebook
  • Pride – Instagram

You can see that there is truth in this. Social Media is not about Social anything, it is about you. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at my opinions! Entertain me! Have sex with me! Feed me! Give me money!” Pride, through and through. Facebook is the king of the socials, and even owns many subordinate sites. Now it wants to control your money through it’s crypto program.

We are giving Facebook this power. Facebook is not out there to help us. Facebook exists to hinder us, or actively hurt us.

Do not trust Facebook to do the right thing. The pursuit of virtue requires clarity of Mind, Body, and Soul, and Facebook does not forward that aim.

Pray for those addicted to Social Media, that their hearts might be turned to Christ.

AMDG

XXXI – Invictus (No. 2)

A reminder in tough times.

Out of the Night that Covers Me, Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole

Do not despair.

I thank whatever gods may be, for my unconquerable soul

The one and only God, for the blessings of this life.

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud

Life is hard.

Under the bludgeonings of Chance, my head is bloody but unbowed

I do not yield to strife

Beyond this place of wrath and tears, looms but the horror of the shade

Life is fleeting.

And yet the Menace of the Years Finds, and Shall Find me, Unafraid

I face my fate with head held high.

It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.

No one is keeping score.

I am the Master Of my Fate, I am the Captain of my soul

I choose to follow Christ.

IV – Presented Without Comment

The Conquerors

by Harry Kemp
I SAW the Conquerors riding by
— With trampling feet of horse and men:
Empire on empire like the tide
— Flooded the world and ebbed again;A thousand banners caught the sun,
— And cities smoked along the plain,
And laden down with silk and gold
— And heaped-up pillage groaned the wain.I saw the Conquerors riding by,
— Splashing through loathsome floods of war —
The Crescent leaning o’er its hosts,
— And the barbaric scimitar, —

And continents of moving spears,
— And storms of arrows in the sky,
And all the instruments sought out
— By cunning men that men may die!

I saw the Conquerors riding by
— With cruel lips and faces wan:
Musing on kingdoms sacked and burned
— There rode the Mongol Ghengis Khan;

And Alexander, like a god,
— Who sought to weld the world in one;
And Caesar with his laurel wreath;
— And like a thing from Hell the Hun;

And, leading like a star the van,
— Heedless of upstretched arm and groan,
Inscrutable Napoleon went
— Dreaming of empire, and alone. . . .

Then all they perished from the earth
— As fleeting shadows from a glass,
And, conquering down the centuries,
— Came Christ, the Swordless, on an ass!