by

Unanimity minus one

Why does no one step forward to defend the scapegoat victim? An obvious answer is that aligning with the victim risks the wrath of the mob falling on the defender too.

The other is social conformity. On the face of it, this smacks of something wormlike and intensely ignoble.

In a famous experiment, a large crowd of people agree to lie. They will say that line A is shorter than line B even though the reverse is true. Just one person is the experimental subject and this person does not know about the pact shared by the others. This person will deny the evidence of his senses and agree with the crowd. Pathetic!

But, try to think of a single thing you think is true that no one else at all believes. Give up? If no support is forthcoming from anyone at all – not a friend or family member – how would this belief be maintained?

Continue reading →

by

Open Thread: Bright Lights Under the Shadow of the Hideous Strength

Orthospherean Dale Nelson commented on my recent post about That Hideous Strength:

Interested readers can find my old commentary on That Hideous Strength [at Bruce Charlton’s Notion Club Papers, Bright Lights Under the Shadow of the Hideous Strength: The St. Anne’s Household — and Our Own Households.] Printed, it runs to about 60 pages including its appendices. It could use some revision but I think there is a lot of good material in it. It was originally prepared as a paper for a Christian retreat in rural Wisconsin. If anyone reads it and would like to discuss it, could The Orthosphere host that discussion?

That Hideous Strength is indeed an inspiring work, and my paper provides some leads for further reading.

Continue reading →

by

That Hideous Strength

Who has read and remembers That Hideous Strength – of the gigantic oeuvre of CS Lewis, the capstone, masterpiece, and summation – and who has lately followed the news in the alternative media must have noticed a horrible semblance of these last weeks to the gathering storm that novel so masterfully presents, of good and evil human, natural, and supernatural rising to a tremendous pitch of intensity and power as they drive each inexorably to a titanic, shattering battle. I do not mean here to specify all the parallels, but they are almost all there: corrupt government agencies with noble sounding names and ends that work in fact deep evil; a cruel fat sadistic lesbian harridan, plaything and willing instrument of obscure Satanic masters; inner circles within inner circles, each more vicious and twisted than the last; sexual sin run amok; young victims; hubris on a vast scale, pretensions to a Babelonian New World Order and a New Man; nominalist obfuscation, nihilism and relativism; sophistical academics and rotten priests; contempt for all that is good, true and holy, old and homely, right, simple, and sweet, or even simply and honestly rational (all in the name of rationality) – the whole nine yards. And arrayed against these Powers, a pitiful few doughty hapless writers and scholars, talking mostly to each other in a remote corner of the world of what is good and right, true and holy, strait and wise, solid and reliable.

Continue reading →

by

Jordan Peterson’s distinction between PC Egalitarian and PC authoritarian

Clare Graves’ MEME theory involved asking subjects to describe their conception of a “successful” person. Beck and Cowan subsequently color coded the resulting developmental levels in their book Spiral Dynamics. Blue MEME  is the fundamentalist with black and white moral conceptions. Blue divides the world into true believers who are saved and the dissenters who are damned. It is “you’re either with us or against us.”

Green MEME is the liberal egalitarian obsessed with equality. Since social structures and developmental theories involve hierarchies and the liberal hates hierarchies, social structures end up being jettisoned. One instance of this was when the radicals took over the university in the 1960s and demanded new courses reflecting Green ideology. The students schooled the professors, erasing the appropriate hierarchy.

Jordan Peterson, the anti-political correctness Toronto professor, distinguishes between PC egalitarian and PC authoritarian. He claims the PC authoritarian is conscientious and likes rules; and has low verbal and cognitive ability. The PC egalitarian, on the other hand, is high in motherly compassion and verbal ability. The PC authoritarian favors censorship and punishment for breaking the rules. The PC egalitarian has high verbal ability and responds positively to the PC authoritarian’s claims of being assaulted by unwelcome speech. She then comes up with post hoc justifications for why the PC-a’s demands are legitimate.

Continue reading →

by

How to Reckon the King

In How to Find the King, I looked back to my experience as a member of the Grand Canyon Crew for insight into how a band of men discover who among them are noble, and who the noblest. The Grand Canyon Crew was remarkable for its fraternity. We were all equals; if there was to be a Head Boatman, he would be primus inter pares.

This sort of fraternity within a band of brothers is the feudal ideal. Its archetype is the Round Table. Arthur wanted to be, and was indeed, first a brother among brothers, and only in virtue of that brotherhood would he want to be their King.

Most bands of brothers are not as fraternal as the old Grand Canyon Crew, let alone the Round Table. Some in such bands are nobler somehow. What distinguishes the nobler brothers?

Continue reading →

by

The Pagan Ordeal of Dominique Venner

venner-library

Dominique Venner

My article on the late Dominique Venner (1935 – 2013) has appeared at The Sydney Traditionalist Forum in three parts (here, here, and here), handsomely presented by the Forum’s convener, Edwin Dyga, whom I would like to thank publicly for his care and thoroughness in the matter.  Venner, whose death took the form of a ghastly suicide in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Paris, was a founder of the French New Right and a prolific author of articles and books.  As far as I can tell, only  one of Venner’s books is available in English, The Shock of History (Arktos 2015), which seems to be based on material for his last book to be published in French, Un Samouraï d’Occident: Le Bréviaire des insoumis (Pierre Guillaume de Roux 2013).  I have addressed, in the article, Venner’s Histoire et tradition des Européens: 30,000 ans d’identité (Éditions du Rocher 2002), summarizing and commenting on its overarching thesis: Namely that there is an indubitable, traceable, coherent European Identity whose basic motifs can be followed back through Medieval and Classical history into the archeology of prehistory and finally to the cave-paintings at Chauvet, which science now dates to 30,000 years ago.  The Histoire also contains a potent double critique of modernity and liberalism comparable to similar critiques undertaken in the Twentieth Century by such as René Guénon and Julius Evola.

Part I of the article explores the possible motives and the meaning – or lack of motive – of Venner’s self-destructive act; Part II concerns itself with Venner’s oeuvre, especially the Histoire.  Part III deals with the grossly hypocritical journalistic reaction to Venner’s demise and attempts to set his work in a larger Traditionalist context by showing how its argument often converges what one might call Christian Traditionalism.  I argue, for example, that passages from Father Seraphim Rose on the topic of nihilism could be traded with passages by Venner on the same topic, and that the switch would be undetectable.  I am, finally, an advocate for Venner’s work, which I would like to make available to an English-language audience.

[The title Un Samouraï d’Occident: Le Bréviaire des insoumis might be translated as A Samurai of the West: The Breviary of the Unsubjected; the title Histoire et tradition des Européens: 30,000 ans d’identité might be translated as History and Tradition of the European People: 30,000 Years of Identity.]

by

Dirty Homonationalists

Beginning tomorrow, the Philosophy Department at this university will be sponsoring the Twenty-third annual “Philosophy Born of Struggle Conference,” at which the keynote speaker will be Dr. Lisa Corrigan, an associate professor of Communication at the University of Arkansas.  Up there in the heart of the Ozarks, Dr. Corrigan also serves as Director of Gender Studies and is affiliated with both African and African-American, and Latin American, Studies.  Continue reading →

by

Transvestites

Old-fashioned transvestites had the virtue of celebrating femininity – albeit an over-the-top movie star conception. This can be contrasted with the self-hatred and misogyny that many feminists evince, to the point of insisting that actresses be called “actors.” Many feminists insist that adjectives associated with men and masculinity are positive, those associated with women, negative. The old-fashioned transvestite at least paid homage to the feminine genius.

The modern version of transvestitism has turned into a scapegoating lynch mob with a tyranny of the minority making up constantly changing rules about how they are to be addressed, how we are to think of them, etc.. A man in women’s clothing is one thing. A man who insists that he is a woman is quite another.