Whether or not you’re religious, religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity. We had a guest preacher once who was talking about the prodigal son in the pig pen, and he said “it’s just gravity - the person in the pig pen can always pull you in easier than you can pull him out.” People can easily slide into depravity but have to work to embrace virtue. And our society has been pushed, subtly at first and then one great heave, onto the slide. We each have to pull ourselves out and that takes more work than many are willing to do, since the depravity seems to come much more naturally when you can find examples with the click of a mouse at any time of day or night.
It ain't going away until the middle recognizes we're already in a revolution.
We need a counter-revolution. That starts by informing (easy just point out the idiocracy) the middle/normies that the revolution by The Left started, in earnest, 20 years ago.
Isaiah 3:12 O My people! Their taskmasters are infants, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And swallow up the way of your paths.
I have extremely high trait-openness, and am sometimes tripped up by my willingness to inhabit a worldview for the purposes of testing it, even when I can see that it is not being proffered in good faith.
I’ll play the “pretend you are Socrates” game to the point of absurdity, leading my loved ones to suspect I’m bonkers at times.
So in my very first substack post, I experimented with the idea that there is no objective truth, and defended that position in arguments. And what I ultimately concluded is that there might *not* be, but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface, or we cannot function as a society, *and* that this is part of what *being* in a common culture means.
It’s way past time to recognize we are living in a nation of tribes of varying degrees of aggression, stop trying to convince people whose word for outsiders is “non-human” that we all have the same intentions and values, and take our toys and go.
I like James Lindsay a lot, but his mockery of national divorce as some kind of Christian Nationalist plot is mistaken. That’s like saying that leaving an abusive marriage is playing into the hands of the abuser by letting him win.
This is all part of normalizing the demoralization of society, of which we are already well on our way. Wokedom is a cancer that eats everything it touches and poisons the minds of the young. The followers of wokedom are zealous in their irrational pursuits. The people at the top of the food chain don't actually believe any of this garbage, they just push it on the useful idiots to carry out their mission because they are just a means to an end. The sad thing is that ideologies are not easily overcome. Really, there needs to be a widespread spiritual revival toward truth and goodness. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
“Heaven has given to every human being the power of controlling his passions, and if he neglects or loses it, the fault is his own, and he must be answerable for it.” - John Quincy Adams
Well, bad cat, you are starting to come around. You recognize, and have laid out a pretty good argument, the need to adhere to objective morality. It comes from the Creator. All other paths to morality are subjective and so who can argue one's morality is superior another's.
I've lately taken to using the term "master bedroom" when talking with Realtors. They rephrase as "primary bedroom" or even worse "owner's suite" (isn't the whole property the owner's property?) and I will rephrase as "master bedroom." As their commission is more important than PC, they eventually go along.
Everyone used to teach their children what to do with their hands. Women have *always* coded. Take a look at the textiles for daily use that even illiterate societies have produced for all of human history.
By marriageable age (matured gonads), in every society, male and female children had been trained in useful crafts. These days, middle- and upper-class parents spend tons of money having their children learn luxury talents but how many of these privileged kids can fix a torn pair of pants?
Now, it's true that there have always been bored people with just a few too many minutes in the day to keep them out of trouble. Some of that trouble leads to advance in knowledge. Some of it leads to picking at the worst parts of yourself until you've got a full-blown pathology.
It's not objective morality--which can't be defined--but common sense that we need to recultivate in modern society. We need to stop telling lies to little kids and raising them with illogic framed as inclusiveness.
Heather doesn't have two mommies. Somewhere there was a guy who fathered her, even if just by donating the sperm only a guy can produce. At least one of those ladies raising Heather has no biological relation to her. That's not anything shameful but it is entirely true. Children not raised to understand that are going into the real world unmoored from basic reality.
We need basic courage too. If a guy is shaving in the women's locker room, cancel your membership. You don't need to go swimming to be fit and healthy. You can do all useful forms of exercise in your living room even if your living room is in an apt.
Comments threads throughout purportedly sensible Substacks are full of whining. A little discipline and self-denial are what's needed. Your girl is playing on a team with a six-foot boy calling himself Heather? Take your girl off the team. Maybe she'll be sad. A little pain leads to growth.
A big part of the reason is that in the late 20th/early21st c. our moral codes have come under attack from the disproportionate 'voice' mass media has given to one-track-minded politicos, 'activists', mouthy obsessives, narcissists, permanent malcontents....and general screwballs among us. Anyone who has actually got a reasonably balanced view of life is far less likely to be a media-type of person and so the voices of moral sanity are underrepresented. This has reached a crisis in the last few crazy wokey wokey years but has actually been brewing for 50 years and more. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
Before one feels entirely "comfortable" claiming there is no objective morality, they have first become comfortable claiming there is no objective REALITY! To make either claim one must embrace and become "comfortable" with logical contradictions.
We have begun purchasing tickets to board a doomed flight FROM Reason and its inviolate discipline of logic. It manifests in endless examples. From the simple political examples of the sixties in which we were "instructed" to practice the VIRTUE of racial discrimination in order to end the EVIL of racial discrimination, to the most recent absurdity. The willful ignorance of Aristotle’s epistemological law of identity, wherein “a thing cannot be itself and something else at the same time or in the same respect!” You merely have to "identify" as it!
It is a doomed flight, one that will crash in a destructive cacophony of the usual brutality, carnage, and injustice. Meanwhile, assure your seat belts are fastened, tray tables are up, and your seat backs are in the full upright position!
Whether or not you’re religious, religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity. We had a guest preacher once who was talking about the prodigal son in the pig pen, and he said “it’s just gravity - the person in the pig pen can always pull you in easier than you can pull him out.” People can easily slide into depravity but have to work to embrace virtue. And our society has been pushed, subtly at first and then one great heave, onto the slide. We each have to pull ourselves out and that takes more work than many are willing to do, since the depravity seems to come much more naturally when you can find examples with the click of a mouse at any time of day or night.
It ain't going away until the middle recognizes we're already in a revolution.
We need a counter-revolution. That starts by informing (easy just point out the idiocracy) the middle/normies that the revolution by The Left started, in earnest, 20 years ago.
Isaiah 3:12 O My people! Their taskmasters are infants, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And swallow up the way of your paths.
The Bible is always right!
Without a universally agreed upon set of principle beliefs, such as those that religion provided for centuries, there can be nothing but chaos.
We have to have a baseline standard to work within or we end up in the hell you’re describing.
I have extremely high trait-openness, and am sometimes tripped up by my willingness to inhabit a worldview for the purposes of testing it, even when I can see that it is not being proffered in good faith.
I’ll play the “pretend you are Socrates” game to the point of absurdity, leading my loved ones to suspect I’m bonkers at times.
So in my very first substack post, I experimented with the idea that there is no objective truth, and defended that position in arguments. And what I ultimately concluded is that there might *not* be, but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface, or we cannot function as a society, *and* that this is part of what *being* in a common culture means.
It’s way past time to recognize we are living in a nation of tribes of varying degrees of aggression, stop trying to convince people whose word for outsiders is “non-human” that we all have the same intentions and values, and take our toys and go.
I like James Lindsay a lot, but his mockery of national divorce as some kind of Christian Nationalist plot is mistaken. That’s like saying that leaving an abusive marriage is playing into the hands of the abuser by letting him win.
The Irish just said "Pop it up the old back passage" to their government's plans to constitutionalise relativism. Take heart.
This is all part of normalizing the demoralization of society, of which we are already well on our way. Wokedom is a cancer that eats everything it touches and poisons the minds of the young. The followers of wokedom are zealous in their irrational pursuits. The people at the top of the food chain don't actually believe any of this garbage, they just push it on the useful idiots to carry out their mission because they are just a means to an end. The sad thing is that ideologies are not easily overcome. Really, there needs to be a widespread spiritual revival toward truth and goodness. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
“Heaven has given to every human being the power of controlling his passions, and if he neglects or loses it, the fault is his own, and he must be answerable for it.” - John Quincy Adams
Well, bad cat, you are starting to come around. You recognize, and have laid out a pretty good argument, the need to adhere to objective morality. It comes from the Creator. All other paths to morality are subjective and so who can argue one's morality is superior another's.
I've lately taken to using the term "master bedroom" when talking with Realtors. They rephrase as "primary bedroom" or even worse "owner's suite" (isn't the whole property the owner's property?) and I will rephrase as "master bedroom." As their commission is more important than PC, they eventually go along.
Define objective morality. Unless you can do that, all morality is relative.
It's just malignant boredom.
Everyone used to teach their children what to do with their hands. Women have *always* coded. Take a look at the textiles for daily use that even illiterate societies have produced for all of human history.
By marriageable age (matured gonads), in every society, male and female children had been trained in useful crafts. These days, middle- and upper-class parents spend tons of money having their children learn luxury talents but how many of these privileged kids can fix a torn pair of pants?
Now, it's true that there have always been bored people with just a few too many minutes in the day to keep them out of trouble. Some of that trouble leads to advance in knowledge. Some of it leads to picking at the worst parts of yourself until you've got a full-blown pathology.
It's not objective morality--which can't be defined--but common sense that we need to recultivate in modern society. We need to stop telling lies to little kids and raising them with illogic framed as inclusiveness.
Heather doesn't have two mommies. Somewhere there was a guy who fathered her, even if just by donating the sperm only a guy can produce. At least one of those ladies raising Heather has no biological relation to her. That's not anything shameful but it is entirely true. Children not raised to understand that are going into the real world unmoored from basic reality.
We need basic courage too. If a guy is shaving in the women's locker room, cancel your membership. You don't need to go swimming to be fit and healthy. You can do all useful forms of exercise in your living room even if your living room is in an apt.
Comments threads throughout purportedly sensible Substacks are full of whining. A little discipline and self-denial are what's needed. Your girl is playing on a team with a six-foot boy calling himself Heather? Take your girl off the team. Maybe she'll be sad. A little pain leads to growth.
A big part of the reason is that in the late 20th/early21st c. our moral codes have come under attack from the disproportionate 'voice' mass media has given to one-track-minded politicos, 'activists', mouthy obsessives, narcissists, permanent malcontents....and general screwballs among us. Anyone who has actually got a reasonably balanced view of life is far less likely to be a media-type of person and so the voices of moral sanity are underrepresented. This has reached a crisis in the last few crazy wokey wokey years but has actually been brewing for 50 years and more. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
Before one feels entirely "comfortable" claiming there is no objective morality, they have first become comfortable claiming there is no objective REALITY! To make either claim one must embrace and become "comfortable" with logical contradictions.
We have begun purchasing tickets to board a doomed flight FROM Reason and its inviolate discipline of logic. It manifests in endless examples. From the simple political examples of the sixties in which we were "instructed" to practice the VIRTUE of racial discrimination in order to end the EVIL of racial discrimination, to the most recent absurdity. The willful ignorance of Aristotle’s epistemological law of identity, wherein “a thing cannot be itself and something else at the same time or in the same respect!” You merely have to "identify" as it!
It is a doomed flight, one that will crash in a destructive cacophony of the usual brutality, carnage, and injustice. Meanwhile, assure your seat belts are fastened, tray tables are up, and your seat backs are in the full upright position!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn answered this question in 1983. “How we got here” - “Men have forgotten God.”
https://www.templetonprize.org/laureate-sub/solzhenitsyn-acceptance-speech/
Great post!
The NYT word usage graphs are a real eye-opener.