This piece is why I subscribe. Excellent. So many good points. I'll just mention one. The idea that racism, and specifically police violence against blacks, is out of control. The internet makes it easy to look up facts but facts are boring. Who wants facts when you can watch an emotionally gut wrenching video.
The problem with facts is that you can interpret them however you please. If you look at the rate of blacks killed at the hands of police in relation to their number in the population there are more than might be expected. If instead you look at interactions with the police then there are fewer than you would expect. You just have to convince people that the latter is the sensible way to view such statistics. Yet both are facts.
The churches didn't always help themselves. Watching the spectacular intellectual collapse of the American Episcopal church (with the corresponding collapse in membership) is sad, but they aided and abetted themselves along the way. I'm not quite sure what the Episcopal leadership really think or believe these days. However, there are still surviving individual churches that manage to eke out a balanced, pragmatic existence. I remember back in the 1990s people worried that the public perception of Christianity was being dominated by the evangelicals, which sharply turned off the moderates, and nowadays the public perception of Christianity is increasingly dominated by woke churches, which is sharply turning off the moderates, but at the same time going woke doesn't make the churches more endearing to the woke, because, churches are, of course, institutionally racist symbols of white supremacy.
I must admit I found the whole obsession over white supremacy as the original sin ignorant, and if you spend prolonged periods living in "non white" countries in the Middle East and Asia you soon realize how shockingly provincial and ignorant western woke progressives are. They rail against their forbears for being colonialists while ignorant that they're attempting to impose their own forms of colonialist views on the rest of the world. Har har.
I'm extremely proud that I managed to get this joke: "That’s absurd, you think, some criminal killed by the authorities in a distant land having this huge impact on our lives? Would never happen."
"It’s often the case that whenever something new and interesting appears on the horizon, excitable prophets will step forward to tell us how it’s going to transform our world; then the thing doesn’t transform our world, everyone laughs at the failed clairvoyants, goes back to their lives and fails to notice as they turn out right, just later than expected."
I think a prudent reason to be conservative (as opposed to a Conservative) is that the medium- or long-term consequences of any change are often profound and often not predictable at the time. An example (not technological but social in nature) which I often reflect on: when I was a boy in the 1990s, most people, left or right, were more or less uncomplicatedly in favour of free speech. Now free speech is increasingly contested, especially among the young, who seem increasingly to think that merely hurtful speech should be censored. Lots of people have spilt much ink as to how this change has come about.
I trace it to the way our societies reacted to the Islamist problem in the early years after September 11th. It became clear that Muslim extremists might react violently to mere speech that insulted their religion. For the sake of a quiet life, most people capitulated, veiling their cowardice in awkward mutterings about "respect". At the time, this seemed like a small change - in a sense it wasn't even a conscious one, since it was the sum total of many individual choices about what to say and not to say.
The consequences have been twofold. Firstly, many older people, uneasily aware that they had taken the coward's way out, tried to convince themselves otherwise by talking themselves round to the idea that, after all, mere speech could be genuinely harmful. Thus a pragmatic, limited exception to free speech norms, made to avoid violence, was gradually generalised into a more widespread structure of taboos, seeking to repress any speech that could be construed as offensive to any minority group.
As for younger people, an undergraduate now was actually born after September 11th. He / she (or dare I say, "they"), has spent his / her / their entire life in a society in which there has been a fairly widespread tacit or explicit acceptance that offensive speech should be restricted or forbidden. Is it any wonder that people raised in such conditions should think them normal?
The question we should ask about any major change is: How will a society function once this change is normalised? If we can't clearly predict the answer, we should maybe hesitate about making the change at all.
Yes I think society took a collective decision to treat that issue in a very cowardly way and that sort of cowardice always has longer term consequences. That could make a good piece, especially as the issue has sort of been buried in the collective minds.
It's also the easiest sort of cowardice because none of us really *want* to offend Muslims, I certainly don't, but when representatives of a group threaten violence against a society for insulting the then you have to do something.
If I can add my praise too. At times it's gut wretching to watch what can look like the destruction of our culture right down to its very bedrock , in a way that would be unimaginable were it not happening , but there are jokes to be had along the way, and maybe even a sense that this cult system goes so against human factory settings that it is ultimately unsustainable.
I have nothing original to add to everyone's comments, but that hasn't stopped me before. A couple of references: first, Nietzsche said something to the effect that if you kill the bear in the cave, the shadow remains for some time. This reference to the death of Christianity is playing itself out now that Christianity no longer has cultural relevance in American institutions.
The second reference is to Kenneth Clark's observation that Roman civilization collapsed because it no longer had confidence in its values. Once the values no longer resonated, it lost all vitality and energy; It no longer believed in itself. Christendom is dead because it no longer believes in itself; it just isn't compatible with Modernity's emphasis on reason and individualism. Crucially. we have now consecrated "inclusivity," perhaps above all else. This is fundamentally incompatible with traditional Christianity and has evaporated the bear's shadow.
Your opening makes me think of the Bill Gates quote: ‘Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.'
I was a New Atheist back in the day but I never believed a rational world was likely to bring about a better world than the mildy Christian one I inhabited (I had read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon). Like most people I believed that extreme religion, especially Islam, was a danger. However, what really motivated me to get involved in the discussion was the sight of grown men and women discussing things like trans-substantiation and the Virgin Birth, often with that annoying self-satisfied look on their silly faces.
Though I didn't think so at the time, I now think it likely that religion is good for us, or at least good for some of us (me included), though Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins conceded as much. What they didn't concede is that this makes it 'true'. To some people this is a mere detail, the hair-splitting of pedants. I think such people view religion as they view recipes: either good or bad, not true or false. I don't.
Nice one, Ed. An adept explanation of the current progressivist millennial cult. I don’t know if anyone’s done a better job, and so concisely. It’s important that such articles, of this standard, are out there. They are an antidote to a strange bewilderment which, at times, seems intentional - a bamboozled and demoralised society is easier to control, or something.
I think the view of American religiousity of the early noughts as exceptional was mistaken- There interestingly seems to be a similar pattern with evangelicals in Brasil The Mom converts and people fizzle out
I do remember the Floyd Spring I remember it with fury. I know many people across the world felt this. I want to see a push back. I want to see their petty idols cast down
Re progressivism as religion, theres an account I follow on twitter that alternates between the owners wry mockery of their youth as a passionate evangelical terrified of hell and shameful confessions of their racism and programme of anti racist reading.
This piece is why I subscribe. Excellent. So many good points. I'll just mention one. The idea that racism, and specifically police violence against blacks, is out of control. The internet makes it easy to look up facts but facts are boring. Who wants facts when you can watch an emotionally gut wrenching video.
The problem with facts is that you can interpret them however you please. If you look at the rate of blacks killed at the hands of police in relation to their number in the population there are more than might be expected. If instead you look at interactions with the police then there are fewer than you would expect. You just have to convince people that the latter is the sensible way to view such statistics. Yet both are facts.
Sure. Facts are knowledge, their proper use is wisdom
The churches didn't always help themselves. Watching the spectacular intellectual collapse of the American Episcopal church (with the corresponding collapse in membership) is sad, but they aided and abetted themselves along the way. I'm not quite sure what the Episcopal leadership really think or believe these days. However, there are still surviving individual churches that manage to eke out a balanced, pragmatic existence. I remember back in the 1990s people worried that the public perception of Christianity was being dominated by the evangelicals, which sharply turned off the moderates, and nowadays the public perception of Christianity is increasingly dominated by woke churches, which is sharply turning off the moderates, but at the same time going woke doesn't make the churches more endearing to the woke, because, churches are, of course, institutionally racist symbols of white supremacy.
I must admit I found the whole obsession over white supremacy as the original sin ignorant, and if you spend prolonged periods living in "non white" countries in the Middle East and Asia you soon realize how shockingly provincial and ignorant western woke progressives are. They rail against their forbears for being colonialists while ignorant that they're attempting to impose their own forms of colonialist views on the rest of the world. Har har.
What's great about your writing, Ed, is that you're not afraid to make a joke in the middle of a serious, well written piece.
I'm extremely proud that I managed to get this joke: "That’s absurd, you think, some criminal killed by the authorities in a distant land having this huge impact on our lives? Would never happen."
"It’s often the case that whenever something new and interesting appears on the horizon, excitable prophets will step forward to tell us how it’s going to transform our world; then the thing doesn’t transform our world, everyone laughs at the failed clairvoyants, goes back to their lives and fails to notice as they turn out right, just later than expected."
I think a prudent reason to be conservative (as opposed to a Conservative) is that the medium- or long-term consequences of any change are often profound and often not predictable at the time. An example (not technological but social in nature) which I often reflect on: when I was a boy in the 1990s, most people, left or right, were more or less uncomplicatedly in favour of free speech. Now free speech is increasingly contested, especially among the young, who seem increasingly to think that merely hurtful speech should be censored. Lots of people have spilt much ink as to how this change has come about.
I trace it to the way our societies reacted to the Islamist problem in the early years after September 11th. It became clear that Muslim extremists might react violently to mere speech that insulted their religion. For the sake of a quiet life, most people capitulated, veiling their cowardice in awkward mutterings about "respect". At the time, this seemed like a small change - in a sense it wasn't even a conscious one, since it was the sum total of many individual choices about what to say and not to say.
The consequences have been twofold. Firstly, many older people, uneasily aware that they had taken the coward's way out, tried to convince themselves otherwise by talking themselves round to the idea that, after all, mere speech could be genuinely harmful. Thus a pragmatic, limited exception to free speech norms, made to avoid violence, was gradually generalised into a more widespread structure of taboos, seeking to repress any speech that could be construed as offensive to any minority group.
As for younger people, an undergraduate now was actually born after September 11th. He / she (or dare I say, "they"), has spent his / her / their entire life in a society in which there has been a fairly widespread tacit or explicit acceptance that offensive speech should be restricted or forbidden. Is it any wonder that people raised in such conditions should think them normal?
The question we should ask about any major change is: How will a society function once this change is normalised? If we can't clearly predict the answer, we should maybe hesitate about making the change at all.
Yes I think society took a collective decision to treat that issue in a very cowardly way and that sort of cowardice always has longer term consequences. That could make a good piece, especially as the issue has sort of been buried in the collective minds.
It's also the easiest sort of cowardice because none of us really *want* to offend Muslims, I certainly don't, but when representatives of a group threaten violence against a society for insulting the then you have to do something.
This is a triumph, Ed. Thank you.
Well that was depressing! Still, it explains a lot of things, and it’s interesting how humans are guided by the same things over and over again.
(BTW thanks to Aidan Barrett for the Mayans reference - that was his suggestion)
If I can add my praise too. At times it's gut wretching to watch what can look like the destruction of our culture right down to its very bedrock , in a way that would be unimaginable were it not happening , but there are jokes to be had along the way, and maybe even a sense that this cult system goes so against human factory settings that it is ultimately unsustainable.
I have nothing original to add to everyone's comments, but that hasn't stopped me before. A couple of references: first, Nietzsche said something to the effect that if you kill the bear in the cave, the shadow remains for some time. This reference to the death of Christianity is playing itself out now that Christianity no longer has cultural relevance in American institutions.
The second reference is to Kenneth Clark's observation that Roman civilization collapsed because it no longer had confidence in its values. Once the values no longer resonated, it lost all vitality and energy; It no longer believed in itself. Christendom is dead because it no longer believes in itself; it just isn't compatible with Modernity's emphasis on reason and individualism. Crucially. we have now consecrated "inclusivity," perhaps above all else. This is fundamentally incompatible with traditional Christianity and has evaporated the bear's shadow.
Your opening makes me think of the Bill Gates quote: ‘Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.'
Never heard that one. Is true I think.
I was a New Atheist back in the day but I never believed a rational world was likely to bring about a better world than the mildy Christian one I inhabited (I had read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon). Like most people I believed that extreme religion, especially Islam, was a danger. However, what really motivated me to get involved in the discussion was the sight of grown men and women discussing things like trans-substantiation and the Virgin Birth, often with that annoying self-satisfied look on their silly faces.
Though I didn't think so at the time, I now think it likely that religion is good for us, or at least good for some of us (me included), though Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins conceded as much. What they didn't concede is that this makes it 'true'. To some people this is a mere detail, the hair-splitting of pedants. I think such people view religion as they view recipes: either good or bad, not true or false. I don't.
Nice one, Ed. An adept explanation of the current progressivist millennial cult. I don’t know if anyone’s done a better job, and so concisely. It’s important that such articles, of this standard, are out there. They are an antidote to a strange bewilderment which, at times, seems intentional - a bamboozled and demoralised society is easier to control, or something.
Forceful speech.
I think the view of American religiousity of the early noughts as exceptional was mistaken- There interestingly seems to be a similar pattern with evangelicals in Brasil The Mom converts and people fizzle out
I do remember the Floyd Spring I remember it with fury. I know many people across the world felt this. I want to see a push back. I want to see their petty idols cast down
Re progressivism as religion, theres an account I follow on twitter that alternates between the owners wry mockery of their youth as a passionate evangelical terrified of hell and shameful confessions of their racism and programme of anti racist reading.
bleak
Why you’d allow your daughters to be subjected to state sanctioned anti-White, anti-British, anti-European propaganda is beyond me.
Bravo !!