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.
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'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.
“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?
Ed is there somewhere subscribers can contact you?