Comments on: About the Decay of Bourgeois Values

By: mdavid

mdavid — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 19:33:55 +0000

I sort of agree and disagree. I think it’s pretty easy to avoid the soft tyranny of the State and culture:

1) kill all push media – no TV, radio, etc.
2) cut spending viciously – if it costs money, it’s usually not good for you.
3) limit services: cook from scratch, cut hair, tailor clothing, fix cars, repair you own house, fix computers yourself.
4) homeschool and be family-centric; have a big family and reject individualism.
5) submit to a religion outside of time and human personalities; this holds everyone accountable and keeps unity.
6) live close enough to your job and walk or bike; if it takes driving, it’s rarely worth it.
7) vacation at home; commit to local people.
8) if you must have something, buy only the best. Make sure it lasts as long as possible. Repair, reuse, maintain.

Anyone doing these things soon finds modernity a Elysian paradise. I pity anyone trying to negotiate with modernity, though. They lose every time. And more over time.

By: Henry Dampier

Henry Dampier — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 22:00:22 +0000

Thanks for the detailed comment.

“it seems like you have to pretty much grow your own food.”

It’s not all that bad. Growing your own food, I mean. I do think that this impossibility is because religious pluralism has not worked, and neither has overt secularism. Whatever happens, dissenters wind up persecuted and unhappy. There is no reason why we have to be forced together as we are. Even a ‘separate together’ federation of cantons or similar political organizations is preferable to e pluribus unum.

I think we are where we are because the previously attempted compromises have lead to mutually unhappy results.

By: Epimetheus

Epimetheus — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 18:29:23 +0000

Growing up in a rural Protestant home-church, there was a persistent theme throughout childhood of the fundamentalist lifestyle giving way to modernity. Separating spiritually and psychologically from a dominant degenerate society depends critically on separating socially, which of course is impossible when one is utterly economically dependent. The devout Christian can very well shop in Christian bookstores, toss the television and never go to the cinema, but her coworkers still talk about Breaking Bad and the delights of anal. “Full-assing,” as it were (what an unfortunate segue) is way more exhaustive then you’d think. If you don’t want to feel that glacial corruption of modernity, and you don’t want your kids to either, it seems like you have to pretty much grow your own food. Even then, mentally “othering” the rest of society is exhausting; it’s cognitively dissonant to believe that everyone not-Amish or whatever is corrupted and dangerous, and to also know that they can be sincere and good people.

Still, living virtuously in Cthulu’s shadow is possible, probably the best possibility, but for all your resistance your descendants will probably still be digested. They’ll think they persevered against the monster, that they continue your legacy and the legacy of your forefathers, but they’ll be zombies too. Spong-Zombies, singing hymns to the master while desecrating your corpse.

Maybe that’s melodramatic. I dunno. But I agree that a hard-core rejection of modernity and the means to destroy it would seem to require religion. A lot of it. Dogmatic, ruthless, unapologetic. No more reading out Paul’s sexism, the authority of husbands or fathers, or the divine right of kings.

What say you?