Our feature presentation reminds you to cultivate your garden.
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While a Matrix metaphor might work when describing the masses, it is better to think of the elites in the U.S. as lotus eaters. They are too doped up on greed to make any moves. Alas, they've also locked the doors to the cockpit and are the only ones who can steer.
Possible rule to blunt consumerism: after you have secured food, shelter, heating/cooling, only buy things that you will do at least three hours of work with.
"History is an art, like the other sciences" Veronica Wedgood.
"Liberty is not the fruit of order alone; it is the fruit of mutual concessions between order and disorder." Don Colacho. I despair of this ever being widely (enough) understood.
Rank and file Republican voters think everything is a conspiracy, and then vote in such a way as to conspiracies happen. (Democrats now do it too, but with different conspiracies).
In the age of the printing press, anonymity was a way to avoid the hectoring of the outside world and achieve authenticity. In the internet age, anonymity is a way to join in the hectoring and with it the pan-societal effort to make sure no can be authentic anywhere.
Why has all conservatism become a project in personal vanity? It's the logic of profit that surrounds our culture. It's impossible for nearly anyone to imagine investing in something that might cost them more than they receive. Thus the conservatives feel their best return on investment is to set back and proclaim.
Traditionalism in America has nothing to do with tradition.
Related. "Speech is sharing -- a cooperative art. You're not sharing, merely egoizing." Ursula Le Guin. From The Dispossessed.
The real curse of living in interesting times is watching people try to win iteration after iteration of a negative sum game.
Links and Research
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I likee.
Always looking for the visually stunning.
Here's a sub-Reddit that aggregates interesting articles better than I do. I think I am going to stop doing that soon.
Speaking of Reddit, here is a good thread of Weird Collapse thought, one not destined for the kind of aggregation mentioned just above.
Cal Newport on the dying art of book reading.
I am working on another spiral through Western History for deeper understanding and amusement. I started at 1455 and am reading each year in Wikipedia. This will explain why my tid-bits might cluster together by year for a while. I have no time-frame for how long this project will take. I also will follow my own inclinations in reading whatever I want
The 1518 Dancing Plague -- maybe mushrooms, maybe mass hysteria.
I read this short book on Martin Luther. And it made me think of the nature of the Reformation as a revolution. From the text:
It is interesting to contrast this with the French Revolution, which I recently learned more about in a book by J. F. Bosher.
Cal Newport on the dying art of book reading.
I am working on another spiral through Western History for deeper understanding and amusement. I started at 1455 and am reading each year in Wikipedia. This will explain why my tid-bits might cluster together by year for a while. I have no time-frame for how long this project will take. I also will follow my own inclinations in reading whatever I want
The 1518 Dancing Plague -- maybe mushrooms, maybe mass hysteria.
I read this short book on Martin Luther. And it made me think of the nature of the Reformation as a revolution. From the text:
He [Martin Luther] was a revolutionary, but a conservative one.
. . .
So often a new movement suffers from overenthusiasm. The Reformation was no exception in this respect. Zealots took the usual shortcut from bondage to freedom by way of turmoil instead of restrained orderly procedure.
In parts of Germany the old ways were thrown off hastily. Organs, paintings, and statues were thrown from the churches, vestments were discarded, bread and wine were both administered to the laity, priests married, nuns took husbands, monastic vows were renounced, various forms of the mass were discontinued, priests and worshipers who persisted in the traditional forms were attacked.
It is interesting to contrast this with the French Revolution, which I recently learned more about in a book by J. F. Bosher.
Looking for a really basic investment strategy? You could do worse than this.
