Once again I must apologize for the spotty content here lately (aside from the item I popped up for discussion yesterday, which is really just me picking at a very old scab from a different direction).
I’ve had enough of jeremiads about the state of our decline and misrule; it would be easy enough to write a new one each day, but that job is more than adequately taken. So is the task of explaining, from various theoretical perspectives, how we got here: I’ve done plenty of that over the years, and lots of people are still doing good work in that department (see, for example, Auron Macintyre).
At this point I have little to add that I haven’t already said many times over. Most of what I’d write about current events at this point would consist mainly of “See? I told you so!” — or at this point, maybe something more like “Fly, you fools!!”.
What’s left is to figure out how we get ourselves out of this mess — but frankly, it’s all probably just going to run its dismal and destructive course, as it always has in the past, always and everywhere. Things will be a little different this time round, perhaps, because technology is going to allow the mills to grind “exceeding small” compared to anything that was possible in the past (and because we seem to be, compared to earlier times, more stupid and ignorant than ever), but the great cycles will turn as they always do.
If all that sounds a bit glum, not to worry – I’m fine over here, and have been distracting myself with other things: music, reading, swimming, chess, working on the house, spending time with my lovely wife, and all the other things that a gentleman of “a certain age” is supposed to enjoy. I just haven’t been inclined to write much.
That, of course, may change! You never know with these things; the Muse is fickle and capricious, and the Fall is coming (in both senses of the word). Do check in.
5 Comments
Malcolm, I believe it was Frank Zappa who once said ‘I got to get in it so I can get out of it’ or words to that effect. “Fly, you fools!!”. Or dig in and fight when the forces arrayed against us come into view even to the rustics who inhabit flyover country.
I’m over half way through an interesting book by Michael Walsh titled ” Last Stands: why men fight when all is lost”. Western Man is quite resilient. Even in the middle of the 16th century we…Catholics and Protestants…got fed up with the Pope and united to sack Rome and drove the hapless Pope from the Vatican. The West survived and so did Christianity.
Robert, I hope you’re right, and there will be at last some last-minute awakening that arouses Western Man to resistance, and to sufficient wisdom to winnow the technology that empowers him from that which enslaves him (though unfortunately they may be one and the same).
The biggest problem, though, is our spiritual exhaustion, our severance from the transcendent, and our descent as a civilization from masculine principles, sky, and yang to effeminization, earth, and yin — from an aspirational, organic hierarchy lifting excellence upward, to a horizontal mass of mere earthly life.
Rather than an awakening, our situation seems more like lying in the OR, counting backwards from 100.
That said, you never know! Anything can happen, and there’s no game-clock here. Those of us who can see should — and will! — prepare and preserve, and do what we can to form networks, to educate the young (and each other), and to keep the flame alive and let others know that they are not alone. If we do a good enough job of that, anything is possible.
Hey, maybe I’ll keep writing after all.
PS:
But I gotta get into it to get myself out of it
I gotta get out of it to get myself into it
(From FZ’s Dinah Moe Hum.)
Nice post and more elegantly stated than I am able to do. I’m at the same point of what more can be said about the obvious decline I’ve seen during my 67 years. I’ve gradually retreated into a safe, beautiful space so I can have the distraction of manual work and outdoors. In my case this is a remote mountain holler where I grow food, cut wood for heat, drink water from a spring and tend a patch of grapes to turn into wine for family and friends. Alas, even when you try you can’t escape. This summer a cloud of herbicide drifted across our place and screwed up the grapes. No one knows where the cloud came from. Maybe the military jets that were doing fly overs all summer? Or the toxic Canadian fire smoke? Or the big ag farmer 30 miles away monocropping chemical resistant GMO soybeans? Now that I’m learning about this one little piece, the practical aspects of the soup of chemicals we are all being marinated in, it’s dark indeed.
Interesting discussion at sailer’s place on the perennial question: who were the greatest pop singers? https://www.unz.com/isteve/rolling-stone-founder-jan-wenner-canceled-over-the-white-black-iq-gap/#comments