I've just returned to Japan after a 3-year, Covid-enforced absence and was worried that the country might have taken on some of the weird, progressive beliefs that have become so fashionable elsewhere. I needn't have worried. The girls still dress and want to be like Audrey Hepburn. While envious western expat women accuse them of acting too girly, I feel that all Japanese girls do is go with the grain rather than try to turn themselves into second rate blokes complete with tattoos, piercings, 20 pounds of excess fat and the vocabulary and alcohol intake of an Irish navvy.
I have the chance to go to Japan for a friend's wedding in November but I cant really justify the expense to myself. Let me know if there's any organisation out there who want me to speak so I can justify going. Desperate to see it.
I'll see if I can think of any organisation that might want to sponsor you but being Billy No-Mates and with no connections, the likelihood of that happening is close to zero.
I think there's probably a lot of truth in what she wrote and she herself sounds very nice. However, many Japanese women show that it is indeed possible to be feminine without being a complete airhead. Many of my female students are both charming and clever. Quite a few western women seem to think that more charm inevitably means less brains and strength of character and vice versa. It doesn't.
As someone who's read 18th and 19th and into early 20th century literature, both high and low, people widely accepted the notion of "bad blood," certain families you didn't marry into because of the risk of bad blood being inherited by the next generation, that madness ran into families, as did wild behavior, and and so forth.
Guess for all our scientific advancement, we still have learned very little about human nature. Or rather, the more we learn, the more in denial we are.
I suppose the tabula rasa is the extreme outcome of the cherished belief that you could be anything you wanted to be, the difference is that the concept is now unmoored from reality and has taken to fanciful heights. How dare we let pesky things like biology stop us! There's likely merit to the idea we are witnessing the decadent era of liberalism, before it ultimately defeats itself or collapses on itself.
I'm sure you saw the fabulous youtube clip of Giorgia Meloni railing against being reduced to a mere consumer number rather than acknowledged as a woman, an Italian, a Christian, and in the process her real identity is being taken away from her by forcing her into a neutral blank slate.
"even if on one level people perhaps understand they are untrue"
I think what's going on here -- and Steve Sailer has made similar observations -- is that this thing where the upper classes and those who wish to join or emulate them espouse ridiculous woke beliefs that they probably know are false is an emerging new gentility (Sailer calls it "post-Protestant gentility") where ridiculous beliefs like this set one apart from the lower orders, who will of course lack the manners necessary to bite their tongues and not point out that this stuff is ridiculous. There won't be a "the emperor has no clothes" moment because no one whose opinion matters will demote themselves from the upper classes by transgressing this gentility, and if they do, it would result in their social death without changing anything.
'As a depressive conservative who always sneered at the new atheist movement, I’ve enjoyed a certain, almost masochistic smugness about the way the sharp decline in American religious practice has led to a proliferation of wacky beliefs.'
I imagine you have in mind the idea that when people stop believing in religion they will believe in anything. I have never understood this argument. Is it that religious belief mops up and corrals an alleged human urge to believe odd things? But why would a belief in the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection of Christ inoculate you against a belief in, say, the blank slate?
I think there are two theories. People vary in their rationality, and some people will always hold some supernatural beliefs, so they either invest in religion or whatever else is in the marketplace.
But also scriptural religions come with a body of wisdom that protects people from silly ideas. hard to read St Augustine and then come away thinking any of this stuff.
You're probably sick to death of this question but I'm going to ask it anyway. Among my favourite writers are Mark Steyn, Roger Scruton, Ben Sixsmith, Charles Moore and yourself and as far as I can tell all are Christians. Now, I'm more than willing to believe that Christianity benefits a society by soaking up and nullifying its human reservoir of irrationality. I'm also happy to concede that there is probably much accumulated wisdom in the sacred texts. The thing I find hard to believe is that you all subscribe to the astonishing supernatural claims of the Bible; if you didn't you wouldn't really be Christians at all but merely a cultural Christians, a position not that different to that of Richard Dawkins. Yet despite my conviction that those writers above are all Christians I don't think I've ever heard one of them come right out and say, 'Yes, I actually do believe in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of Christ and that God is watching over us and all the rest of it'.
Sorry if I come across all New Atheist and strident but since I know where you stand on everything else that matters to me and agree with it all, you may understand why this is a loose tooth I can't leave alone.
It seems to me that this present life of man on earth, in comparison to that time which is unknown to us, is as if you were sitting at table in the winter with your ealdormen and thegns, and a fire was kindled and the hall warmed, while it rained and snowed and stormed outside. A sparrow came in, and swiftly flew through the hall; it came in at one door, and went out at the other. Now during the time when he is inside, he is not touched by the winter's storms; but that is the twinkling of an eye and the briefest of moments, and at once he comes again from winter into winter. In such a way the life of man appears for a brief moment; what comes before, and what will follow after, we do not know. Therefore if this doctrine [Christianity] offers anything more certain or more fitting, it is right that we follow it.
What a beautiful piece of writing that is! For a moment I thought you yourself had composed it but then realised you were quoting when it got to the bit about a sparrow flying through the hall.
The problem with this idea is, of course, that despite its beauty the same applies to all 'doctrines' offering certainty in a world of darkness and ignorance, even the doctrines of David Icke and the Mormons.
That flash of light in the darkness and ignorance, that short moment in the barn, if it refers to all we know beyond our own short lives, surely now extends to everything back to the Big Bang to the certain heat death of the universe in our future. So that's a long twinkling of an eye. It not only includes our short time in the barn but the barn itself and everything around it.
You may be right that it's better to choose a doctrine, any doctrine, rather than live a rudderless life guided by nothing at all. And that reasonable conclusion can be followed by the equally reasonably conclusion that it's best to plump for the doctrine you grew up with and feel at home with, rather like preferring your mum's cooking to everyone else's. Still, I suspect you can see the problem here, namely, that it then becomes hard to hold up your hands in despair at the woke crowd for believing anti-science nonsense like men and women being essentially indistinguishable and genes contributing nothing to life outcomes while at the same time claiming that yes, I believe that Christ, who was born of a virgin, was sent to earth by his father, God, to redeem mankind etc. That's not mad at all.
Perhaps you would direct me to St. Augustine who of all Christian scholars appears to put up the best intellectual defense of a belief in Christ, God et al. But going at things that way brings to mind Jonathan Haidt's point about people tending to look for sources that allow them to believe what they want to believe rather than adopting a more neutral stance. My point is that unless someone already wanted to believe the Christian story I don't think it would strike them as being especially plausible, especially in light of what science has discovered over the last 600 years or so.
Finally I think it's inconsistent to call on science as an arbiter in our and Steven Pinker's spat with the woke only to dismiss it again and fall back on faith when it suits us.
This is the most beautiful paragraph you've composed on these pages, and there's some decent competition. This all you? Or did you find inspiration from another writer?
If I were you, I would examine the Theory of Evolution and ask yourself whether you can genuinely believe that complex life forms e.g. humans have been created by mutation + survival of the fittest + the passage of time. So THAT'S how an amoeba develops into a human being? I'm not a Christian but I don't consider the Bible's account of events to be any more incredible than Darwinism's.
If I were you I would examine the cloud action theory of what causes lightning. The positive and negative charges in clouds meet and result in a release of electric energy? I don't consider that any more incredible than the folk belief that Thor throws lighting bolts around.
What makes you assume that I haven't examined the Theory of Evolution? Because it's not possible that other people have read what you haven't?
To add to Ed's comments below, I think people mean different things when they invoke Chesterton's quip about people believing in anything, rather than nothing, when they stop believing in God.
Mankind has embedded deep within its DNA some very powerful features that leave us in need of spiritual nourishment. Ambition, fear, crusading, empathy--all of these and more push us to make art, music, discover new worlds, end famines and plagues, achieve fame and fortune and prestige. Man can not live on bread alone, so he needs a larger purpose to feel fully human.
Religion can both harness and tame these human characteristics; our virtues and vices. It can cause Christians to try and convert "uncivilized" worlds and it can also restrain us by forcing us to reflect upon our sins and ask for God's forgiveness.
But just because Western man has thrown away religion doesn't mean the same drive that got us from the Sphinx to the Moon in 5,000 years has suddenly left our DNA. We've replaced religion with ideology, and hence the revolving door of moral crusades, which we now find ourselves inventing as fast as we do genders and acronyms. The insanity we now see on the Progressive Left (which Ed describes here and elsewhere) could not have happened in an Anglosphere where Christianity was culturally relevant. Maybe there would be other problems that secularists happily note, but at least our elites wouldn't believe that men get pregnant, or that 15 year old girls and boys would perform at the same athletic level if the girls got more support and nurturing; or that prisons should be abolished; or that cities should allow the homeless to set up shop in their downtown parks while the government provides them drug paraphernalia.
Basically I agree, though I think you rather over-egged the pudding by attributing our desire to end famines and plagues to a 'need of spiritual nourishment'. If such things can be attributed to spiritual nourishment then so can everything, including having breakfast and fixing broken roof tiles.
Yes, it may indeed be the case that the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of Christianity from western society has allowed monsters to enter. But does this make it likely that Jesus really was born of a virgin? That was my point. Ed may be right in saying that it's preferable to have benign implausible beliefs rather than harmful implausible beliefs but that doesn't make them any less implausible.
I've just returned to Japan after a 3-year, Covid-enforced absence and was worried that the country might have taken on some of the weird, progressive beliefs that have become so fashionable elsewhere. I needn't have worried. The girls still dress and want to be like Audrey Hepburn. While envious western expat women accuse them of acting too girly, I feel that all Japanese girls do is go with the grain rather than try to turn themselves into second rate blokes complete with tattoos, piercings, 20 pounds of excess fat and the vocabulary and alcohol intake of an Irish navvy.
nice.
I have the chance to go to Japan for a friend's wedding in November but I cant really justify the expense to myself. Let me know if there's any organisation out there who want me to speak so I can justify going. Desperate to see it.
I'll see if I can think of any organisation that might want to sponsor you but being Billy No-Mates and with no connections, the likelihood of that happening is close to zero.
I think there's probably a lot of truth in what she wrote and she herself sounds very nice. However, many Japanese women show that it is indeed possible to be feminine without being a complete airhead. Many of my female students are both charming and clever. Quite a few western women seem to think that more charm inevitably means less brains and strength of character and vice versa. It doesn't.
“When belief in a divinity gives way, a reserve army of idols stands ready to take its place- ideas, dogmas, leaders, movements” Mark Lilla
As someone who's read 18th and 19th and into early 20th century literature, both high and low, people widely accepted the notion of "bad blood," certain families you didn't marry into because of the risk of bad blood being inherited by the next generation, that madness ran into families, as did wild behavior, and and so forth.
Guess for all our scientific advancement, we still have learned very little about human nature. Or rather, the more we learn, the more in denial we are.
I suppose the tabula rasa is the extreme outcome of the cherished belief that you could be anything you wanted to be, the difference is that the concept is now unmoored from reality and has taken to fanciful heights. How dare we let pesky things like biology stop us! There's likely merit to the idea we are witnessing the decadent era of liberalism, before it ultimately defeats itself or collapses on itself.
I'm sure you saw the fabulous youtube clip of Giorgia Meloni railing against being reduced to a mere consumer number rather than acknowledged as a woman, an Italian, a Christian, and in the process her real identity is being taken away from her by forcing her into a neutral blank slate.
Tabula rasa, indeed!
Great piece, Ed. Looking forward to part two.
"even if on one level people perhaps understand they are untrue"
I think what's going on here -- and Steve Sailer has made similar observations -- is that this thing where the upper classes and those who wish to join or emulate them espouse ridiculous woke beliefs that they probably know are false is an emerging new gentility (Sailer calls it "post-Protestant gentility") where ridiculous beliefs like this set one apart from the lower orders, who will of course lack the manners necessary to bite their tongues and not point out that this stuff is ridiculous. There won't be a "the emperor has no clothes" moment because no one whose opinion matters will demote themselves from the upper classes by transgressing this gentility, and if they do, it would result in their social death without changing anything.
The world has gone mad.
Spoiler alert:
https://thoughtsofstone.com/the-day-the-logic-died/
'As a depressive conservative who always sneered at the new atheist movement, I’ve enjoyed a certain, almost masochistic smugness about the way the sharp decline in American religious practice has led to a proliferation of wacky beliefs.'
I imagine you have in mind the idea that when people stop believing in religion they will believe in anything. I have never understood this argument. Is it that religious belief mops up and corrals an alleged human urge to believe odd things? But why would a belief in the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection of Christ inoculate you against a belief in, say, the blank slate?
I think there are two theories. People vary in their rationality, and some people will always hold some supernatural beliefs, so they either invest in religion or whatever else is in the marketplace.
But also scriptural religions come with a body of wisdom that protects people from silly ideas. hard to read St Augustine and then come away thinking any of this stuff.
You're probably sick to death of this question but I'm going to ask it anyway. Among my favourite writers are Mark Steyn, Roger Scruton, Ben Sixsmith, Charles Moore and yourself and as far as I can tell all are Christians. Now, I'm more than willing to believe that Christianity benefits a society by soaking up and nullifying its human reservoir of irrationality. I'm also happy to concede that there is probably much accumulated wisdom in the sacred texts. The thing I find hard to believe is that you all subscribe to the astonishing supernatural claims of the Bible; if you didn't you wouldn't really be Christians at all but merely a cultural Christians, a position not that different to that of Richard Dawkins. Yet despite my conviction that those writers above are all Christians I don't think I've ever heard one of them come right out and say, 'Yes, I actually do believe in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of Christ and that God is watching over us and all the rest of it'.
Sorry if I come across all New Atheist and strident but since I know where you stand on everything else that matters to me and agree with it all, you may understand why this is a loose tooth I can't leave alone.
It seems to me that this present life of man on earth, in comparison to that time which is unknown to us, is as if you were sitting at table in the winter with your ealdormen and thegns, and a fire was kindled and the hall warmed, while it rained and snowed and stormed outside. A sparrow came in, and swiftly flew through the hall; it came in at one door, and went out at the other. Now during the time when he is inside, he is not touched by the winter's storms; but that is the twinkling of an eye and the briefest of moments, and at once he comes again from winter into winter. In such a way the life of man appears for a brief moment; what comes before, and what will follow after, we do not know. Therefore if this doctrine [Christianity] offers anything more certain or more fitting, it is right that we follow it.
What a beautiful piece of writing that is! For a moment I thought you yourself had composed it but then realised you were quoting when it got to the bit about a sparrow flying through the hall.
The problem with this idea is, of course, that despite its beauty the same applies to all 'doctrines' offering certainty in a world of darkness and ignorance, even the doctrines of David Icke and the Mormons.
That flash of light in the darkness and ignorance, that short moment in the barn, if it refers to all we know beyond our own short lives, surely now extends to everything back to the Big Bang to the certain heat death of the universe in our future. So that's a long twinkling of an eye. It not only includes our short time in the barn but the barn itself and everything around it.
You may be right that it's better to choose a doctrine, any doctrine, rather than live a rudderless life guided by nothing at all. And that reasonable conclusion can be followed by the equally reasonably conclusion that it's best to plump for the doctrine you grew up with and feel at home with, rather like preferring your mum's cooking to everyone else's. Still, I suspect you can see the problem here, namely, that it then becomes hard to hold up your hands in despair at the woke crowd for believing anti-science nonsense like men and women being essentially indistinguishable and genes contributing nothing to life outcomes while at the same time claiming that yes, I believe that Christ, who was born of a virgin, was sent to earth by his father, God, to redeem mankind etc. That's not mad at all.
Perhaps you would direct me to St. Augustine who of all Christian scholars appears to put up the best intellectual defense of a belief in Christ, God et al. But going at things that way brings to mind Jonathan Haidt's point about people tending to look for sources that allow them to believe what they want to believe rather than adopting a more neutral stance. My point is that unless someone already wanted to believe the Christian story I don't think it would strike them as being especially plausible, especially in light of what science has discovered over the last 600 years or so.
Finally I think it's inconsistent to call on science as an arbiter in our and Steven Pinker's spat with the woke only to dismiss it again and fall back on faith when it suits us.
This is the most beautiful paragraph you've composed on these pages, and there's some decent competition. This all you? Or did you find inspiration from another writer?
Ben Sixsmith is not a believer, I read in one of his articles. But he’s the only writer other than Ed that I pay to read.
Ah, I see. That's one down and four to go. I wonder why I got that wrong impression?
If I were you, I would examine the Theory of Evolution and ask yourself whether you can genuinely believe that complex life forms e.g. humans have been created by mutation + survival of the fittest + the passage of time. So THAT'S how an amoeba develops into a human being? I'm not a Christian but I don't consider the Bible's account of events to be any more incredible than Darwinism's.
If I were you I would examine the cloud action theory of what causes lightning. The positive and negative charges in clouds meet and result in a release of electric energy? I don't consider that any more incredible than the folk belief that Thor throws lighting bolts around.
What makes you assume that I haven't examined the Theory of Evolution? Because it's not possible that other people have read what you haven't?
Sorry if you felt I was being aggressive. Just because I'm online doesn't make it so.
Your first sentence sounds like an apology. Your second sentence immediately takes it back. I'm confused.
I wrote what I wrote because I thought your comments were daft, not because I thought you were being aggressive.
To add to Ed's comments below, I think people mean different things when they invoke Chesterton's quip about people believing in anything, rather than nothing, when they stop believing in God.
Mankind has embedded deep within its DNA some very powerful features that leave us in need of spiritual nourishment. Ambition, fear, crusading, empathy--all of these and more push us to make art, music, discover new worlds, end famines and plagues, achieve fame and fortune and prestige. Man can not live on bread alone, so he needs a larger purpose to feel fully human.
Religion can both harness and tame these human characteristics; our virtues and vices. It can cause Christians to try and convert "uncivilized" worlds and it can also restrain us by forcing us to reflect upon our sins and ask for God's forgiveness.
But just because Western man has thrown away religion doesn't mean the same drive that got us from the Sphinx to the Moon in 5,000 years has suddenly left our DNA. We've replaced religion with ideology, and hence the revolving door of moral crusades, which we now find ourselves inventing as fast as we do genders and acronyms. The insanity we now see on the Progressive Left (which Ed describes here and elsewhere) could not have happened in an Anglosphere where Christianity was culturally relevant. Maybe there would be other problems that secularists happily note, but at least our elites wouldn't believe that men get pregnant, or that 15 year old girls and boys would perform at the same athletic level if the girls got more support and nurturing; or that prisons should be abolished; or that cities should allow the homeless to set up shop in their downtown parks while the government provides them drug paraphernalia.
Basically I agree, though I think you rather over-egged the pudding by attributing our desire to end famines and plagues to a 'need of spiritual nourishment'. If such things can be attributed to spiritual nourishment then so can everything, including having breakfast and fixing broken roof tiles.
Yes, it may indeed be the case that the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of Christianity from western society has allowed monsters to enter. But does this make it likely that Jesus really was born of a virgin? That was my point. Ed may be right in saying that it's preferable to have benign implausible beliefs rather than harmful implausible beliefs but that doesn't make them any less implausible.
I think if you just reply to the email. but otherwise edjameswest AT gmail.com
I hope this is to offer me a $100,000 deal/
he probably just wants to tell you about the typos