Social Matter

Nursing, as I have, a lifelong dislike for the Beatles, I’ve never put much stock in the proposition that however many “million fans of _________ can’t be wrong.” That’s nonsense. Of course they can be wrong. They frequently are, especially if that millions-strong cohort of fans is comprised mostly of shrieking teenage girls. I do, however, put stock in a somewhat related proposition, which is that no one is wrong about everything, no matter how grotesque in general are their tastes and habits and opinions. Not even Beatles fans are wrong about everything. In the end, there’s probably something to […]

Like stereotypes, clichés are defeasibly true. A picture is worth a thousand words. And another cliché is—actually, I don’t know if we have any good societally pervasive clichés left referring to how the average person doesn’t updates priors in his epistemic net by a careful study of relevant texts. Anyone who believes that this is how people by at large come to form beliefs is projecting. People do not form beliefs this way. They form beliefs through hearsay, through the assigning of epistemic weight to trusted ingroup sources, through pre-existing and probably even biologically present priors. This is because we […]

Neoreaction needs a theory of time, and so since I’m bringing up the topic, it seems only fair that I also proffer one.  I’ll be presenting it in three installments, each one including both theoretical and historical meditations. If neoreaction is to have a theory of time capable of challenging the progressive one, then the theory must have a substantially different structure.  It cannot have a conclusion; there is no promised land at the end of history.  It also has to reconcile two competing ideas: (1) that the future is going to be much like the past, and (2) that […]

In today’s universities, criticizing people with minority sexual practices is enough to get you expelled. Even tenured professors are not immune from the speech codes restricting anything that might be construed as negative towards this protected class. Meanwhile, anyone can have a free hand in attacking the conventional mores of straights. If anything, the administration and the professoriat encourages critiques of traditional sexual practice as oppressive towards women. This set of rules flows down into the culture, as college graduates move on to work in newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and movies. Themes that portray queers as angels and straights as […]

Miley Cyrus, circa 2008, was frequently described as “squeaky-clean.” That was her whole shtick, actually. Of course she went by the name Hannah Montana rather than Miley Cyrus, but her character was a hardworking country girl with “down home values” and a publicly-espoused relationship with Jesus Christ. She had long hair. She dressed conservatively (well, for a pop starlet). She was supposed to be wholesome, something of an antidote, perhaps, to the crass, hyper-sexualized Brittany Spears types that populated the music diva pantheon at the time. A little breath of fresh air wafting in from more pastoral climes. Five years […]

I keep liberal friends on my friend’s list, if only to have insight into liberal dynamics and views. It’s an attempt to mitigate standpoint theory, which accurately describes what I’m getting at here, namely what I call ‘thede-induced blindness’. The term hints at underperformance relative to one’s actual abilities, given the strong pull of loyalty toward one’s own thede. Let’s take the example of ‘cultural Marxism’. Not a few days ago, a liberal acquaintance posted something to the effect of: “Cultural Marxism is everywhere!”—of course it wasn’t in a serious tone. Then came to the enthedening process. It seems thede-induced […]

Not so long ago, a family needed to keep its private papers in file cabinets and cardboard boxes. Accounts needed to be penned in. Checkbooks needed to be balanced, because online banking didn’t exist and ATMs were often distant. While telephones existed, the capacity to record calls in bulk on a mass scale was not yet created. If your private conversations were going to be recorded, someone either had to get a subpoena, have a connection at the phone company, or physically tap your line. Over the last couple decades, there has been a concerted push to put more human […]

Conspiracy theorists get a pretty bum rap in popular parlance. Those loons. They’re a favorite target of politicians and TV talking heads alike, who like to pooh pooh their piddling concerns. (I mean so what if the White House can legally assassinate US citizens without a trial? Who gets worked up over something like that?) Hell, conspiracy theorists get a pretty bum rap in private parlance. They’re social pariahs. No one wants to get cornered by them at a party and hear yet another rant about the Federal Reserve. No one wants them to spoil a pleasant dinner out with […]

Part of the attraction of libertarianism for contemporary conservatives is that it functions as a defensive strategy. One some level, very deep down, they subtly understand that capture of the state and its regulatory agencies is an impossible task—at least as things now stand. There’s a subconscious acknowledgment of the pervasiveness of the Cathedral. When your comprehensive doctrine has no chance at mimetically infiltrating institutions of governance, the strategy shifts to advocating the removal of comprehensive doctrines from institutions of governance. In reality, there technically can be no absence of comprehensive doctrines—all I mean by that is that loosely conceived […]

To at once again become whole As we once were whole, but perhaps It is not as I have said it, the lapse Between the now and then-soul Is too much even for my pretense To make a show of present tense; But dear ones, do consider this In your quite air-conditioned mind Did you at least once escape find Hurtling into an all-present bliss Of terror, love, grief and rage If only by falling into a page? But we are more than what we are And so buffered in our padded cell Do indeed find each other hell A […]