the grievous damage done to rising generations by teaching them to ascribe all adversity to external sources and squall for authority to come and provide redress instead of building the strength, confidence, and resilience to face and overcome it is one of the great tragedies of our time.
this "woke" philosophy lionizes weakness, vanity, and envy, excuses failure and failure to strive, and invalidates the accomplishments of those who do succeed.
it's the ethos of the wrecker and the self-indulgently vicious and vacuous.
they seek false meaning in destroying lives of actual meaning.
And even if all adversity was to come from external sources, so what? Would you scream and rant at the rain, is a question I've asked young people. The rain doesn't care about your plans for a beach party - the rain just is and there's nothing you can do about it as such, but you can decide how you make the most of whatever circumstances arise.
A hard sell even in a culture supportive of such old-timey values (older than judaism even) and all but impossible today, when it is as you say:
"this "woke" philosophy lionizes weakness, vanity, and envy, excuses failure and failure to strive, and invalidates the accomplishments of those who do succeed."
This is dehumanising in extremis - teaching children this is making them into slaves. Never teach a child what it cannot do: teach how and why and when, because doing so is also teaching how, when and why not to do a thing.
Bill Gates would say he’s working on the rain issue. The desire to control nature in every way is a road to ruin. It’s one thing to try to understand, it’s another to say I know better (even before I understand).
The travesty is this “coddling of the American mind” (as Jonathan Haidt calls it) has been intentionally implemented via the K–16 inculcation system to manufacture obedient workers, a formula George Carlin captures succinctly:
I remember this Carlin routine, thanks for supplying the link. Here's a quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti: “Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.”
Which came first the schools coddling or the parents ranting to the schools that little, 16 yo, Johnny needs someone to wipe his butt for him, because it's just so much work? I'm pretty sure I can answer that question, because my mother was a school teacher when the parent yelling started. Before the wholesale coddling by the school systems started.
The Fool's prerogative is to mock the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed virtuous, and to remind that even the farts of an Emperor or a Saint smells like shit.
Enjoying a Fool good at his craft doesn't have to mean one also must use the Fool as an advisor.
Save one, my kids (3 millennials and 2 gen z, but what's in a name?) are self-reliant and in one case, despite being Canadian, would fit in quite well in Texas. I raised them hard, probably too hard, but they get it. And they thanked me for not subjecting them to public school. My wife and I saw the writing on the wall and adjusted for that, and my kids certainly did some suffering because of the choices we made, but I'd rather them be uncomfortable with this current world than demanding others be uncomfortable for them.
I just cannot love this entry,this response and You enough for this analysis!! It really is as simple as “ Take off the bossy pants.” The Bossy Pants in national dialog has really become narcissistic judgmental bullying. Truth and common sense have been obliterated by the need to put people in their place. It brings them pleasure no matter whether they are correct or dead wrong in their name calling. Professor Osters Atlantic piece is as close to an apology “we” will ever get.. “ so we were wrong, so what? We meant well which is more than your crazy conspiracies, so let it go!” .....
It's a video that I come back to often, and never fails to get my mind back on track when it's derailed by the insanity of the world. Because "the goal is not to be on the side of the majority, but to avoid finding ones self among the ranks of the insane."
walking in the woods in thick layers of dry leaves. hugging a cat. cuddling up on the sofa with the dog. sunshine on your face. seeing lovely pictures of cats on el gato malo's blog... hehe. There that is what happiness is. If people disagree, I think they are seriously ill.
I think this is a false framing: Americans have not "fallen prey to the politics of division and turned upon one another." Half of America is suddenly taking relentless incoming fire from 360°. It used to be at least somewhat restrained, but catalyzed by Hillary's defeat in 2016, their rage has exploded and the masks have been ripped off to expose their demonic visage. Leftists fully intend the barrage aimed at us to be 'existential.' No more pussy-footing around. They believe they have the power to enforce their meaning upon us--and they may be right.
I reject the construct that there is reciprocity of action at play--that there is equal wrong on both sides. I know VERY few on the right who would force life choices upon the left. We simply wish to be left the hell alone. We can see that the 'current thing' is always just another excuse to implement the collective vision: communism, socialism, environmentalism, overpopulation, and Covid all different problems that--miraculously--share a common solution: hand over your liberty to our elite overlords.
PS: Arthur Brooks is a classic namby-pamby who STILL doesn't realize that we are in a war for the survival of liberty in the USA. He has perfected the genre of "Can't we all just get along" bleating--which is why, of course, that Atlantic has let him inside the walls. He's a pacifist in the face of the Orc charge.
I read a complaint from a writer that his family has disappeared from his life in the last few years, and he claimed all he ever did was tell them he was disappointed in them supporting Trump and rejecting mask and vaccine mandates because he cared for them. It was a mystery to him why they didn't reciprocate his obvious concern.
Well said! I am reminded of all the people (a person "trapped" in an unhappy marriage) that blame their unhappiness on another person. The truth is that you are unhappy because...wait for it...YOU are unhappy. You control your happiness, and your happiness is not based on things or ease in life.
Can't disagree with your Marcus take-aways. But have getting our thoughts in order the crucial thing is serving others - not at all, merely correct thinking. We are here to serve others (however obnoxious they might be!).
One does not preclude the other. Marcus himself stated:
“For as these were made to perform a particular function, and, by performing it according to their own constitution, gain in full what is due to them, so likewise, a human being is formed by nature to benefit others, and, when he has performed some benevolent action or accomplished anything else that contributes to the common good, he has done what he was constituted for, and has what is properly his.”
This. %100. “Love one another” is purposefully ambiguous when separated from the teachings of Christ, which illustrate what “love one another” actually looks like in practice.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
I respect gato’s intellect immensely, however, two thinkers who i respect more are cs lewis and Tolkien. They understood the last something that gato is missing here: there is an actual God, objectively and unequivocally. and finding belief in that true God and His teachings, are what will lead to us being “complete”. This is what America has lost that we once had. There is no permanent or enduring “self actualization” without realizing that one is a child of God, and becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Absolutely. I would also add that even Voltaire, the father of the Enlightenment, thought God was "necessary" for a functioning society. Many atheists believe him to be one of their own, when in fact he despised atheism, calling it a "monstrous evil." The Communists have proven him to be a very prescient fellow, since the abolition of "the opiate of the people" is one of their goals. Murdering the recalcitrant is a feature, not a bug of this movement. Far more people have been murdered by the secular state than at the behest of those wearing "fancy hats." Not even close.
Before we have a right to pursue happiness, we need to have a right to life. Dostoevsky correctly wrote that "without God, all is permissible." Why, exactly, is human life sacred, if there is no God? We can pretend otherwise, but this question is playing out in the world today. They'll forcibly inject us, chip us, limit our freedom, and probably kill us to "save the planet."
Human rights and human dignity are notion which stem from religion. The ancient Greeks and Romans would laugh hysterically at the idea that "all men are created equal."
(My half-baked thoughts this morning. Might edit late...waiting for coffee to kick in...)
You know, if one wanted to, one could attack your claim about religion not having claimed as many lives as the varous flavours of marxism by pointing to the Meso/South American cultures of old, and to try and make a very sketchy total of all those killed in religious wars. I prefer to use it as an example of how religion very well may endorse mass murder, should that be part and parcel of its tenets.
Having said that, I very much doubt the indian peoples managed to total 50 000 000 dead from their ancestors crossing of the Bering strait to the coming of the spanish and others. I would also add that even the Crusades (which were a response to nearly 500 years of islamic aggression and genocidal practices - somehow woke and atheists always leave that part out...) were largely motivated by trade and economics, rather than religion on its own.
As for the human rights part, well the romans and greeks were far more religious than pretty much anyone now living in the West is, since we all - no matter our respective faiths or lack thereof, secular or not - are molded by both the Enlightenment and all the other ideas that flowed from it.
Not trying to be snide or anything, just adding points to consider.
I appreciate your thoughtful writing, Rikard, and know you're not being snide. I'll try not to be so strident. I can blame my uncaffeinated mind for the tone and choppiness of my post this morning...
Interesting point about the religiosity of the ancients. Nietzsche wrote ("Twilight of the Idols," maybe?) that only 30% of Germans of his time truly believed in God. I wonder what that number is at now.
I was an atheist for a chunk of years and really wrestled with the idea of God and morality. Religion can be, and has been, abused and used for nefarious reasons. It would be foolish for anyone to deny this, but it's equally foolish to think that religion is a source of strife, whose removal would usher in some utopia (Looking at you, John Lennon.)
Caffeine wore off hours ago. Long day of drilling teeth and ventilating Clantons. Gotta get to bed now. Good night for me, good morning to you.
Measuring faith in percentages seems... wrong somehow, like it's profaning something untangible - yet how else are we to measure it at all among groups?
The distinction I was going for is hard to grasp for all of us (or that's me projecting because it's hard to graspand and express for me) but for the ancients and upuntil the Renaissance not only was the divine (no matter the actual faith) thought of and about in the same way we might discuss whether or not amalgam is a good materialfor fillings or not - as somethings tangibly real; "Real in the same way this potato is real to us" to quote myself fromclass.
And everyone thought that way, barring oddball thinkers.
Today, it's largely the opposite (not really an opposite, just a figure of speech) simply due to all of us having for generations been inundated with the present way of perceiving and communicating reality: that materia and spirit is separate and distinct entities to be kept apart both in thought and practice.
(One does not have to be religious to find fault in that.)
I really struggle to understand modern day atheists. If you don't feel like belonging to a specific branch of a school of faith, then don't. And if they leave you in peace, what's the problem? This aggressive war on faith is not atheism, it's just a purityrannical religion where Nothing has been made god, it seems to me.
For Sweden, talking numbers, very few will actually answer that they have no religious faith or that they are atheists, but even fewer will call themselves christians (I could go into detail about the woke heresy of the swedish potestant church, let's save that for a later time) - however, 5 out of 6 will say they believe in "something", so even in "the most secular nation in the world" (which is bollocks) faith is actually a very ever-present part of society. This is discounting moslems, jews and such groups were ehtnicity and faith are almost genetically intertwined.
Personally, I have great respect for faith and for people living their faith - even when it's detrimental to their careers, social status and so on: people who are true to their selves. That I may well disagree on specific concrete issues doesn't change that.
It's too bad there's an ocean in the way: there's a lack of dentists here in the countryside and veterinarian dentists aren't allowed to see human patients.
At least I have the best excuse for spelling-errors now: ate welsh rarebit in bed lastnight and the keyboard of my laptop is now clogged with cheesy crumbs. :)
Everything you wrote about Sweden is occurring in the US now. Sincere, vibrant faith is alive and well in many parts, but the reins of power in the collapsing US are in the hands of an increasing and increasingly virulent group of "cultured despisers." Woke Christians, eager to sign on to whatever new bizarre fad our Regime promotes, quickly retrofit their religion to accept the tenets of our debased culture. It's been disheartening watching Francis' Roman Catholic Church throw its support behind "vaccines" and, now, the "climate crisis."
I live in a suburb of a large, deep blue city. The Protestant churches near me proudly fly BLM banners, have permanently incorporated the Rainbow Flag onto their billboard displaying service times, and even invited Reza Aslan (who wrote a book claiming that Jesus was just another run-of-the-mill zealot) to speak to the congregation just before Christmas a few years back.
A solid remnant of faithful will always exist across various denominations, but Christianity, like America itself, is being destroyed from within.
"Why, exactly, is human life sacred, if there is no God?"
Right on target.
The Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl has come up in this discussion. If human beings are little more than biological machines, no different from the animals, then we should not be surprised that they get treated like animals, piled into cattle cars to be sent to the slaughterhouse.
As someone who extensively geeked out on LOTR and was raised on readings of Narnia, that piece expanded my view and appreciation of both writers. Our habit of over-philosophizing on our nature as humans (as even our revered Cat here does from time to time) makes for interesting thought, but without the anchor of the divine, it can lead down some dark paths. And you can’t accurately philosophize on the nature of Americans and America as an experiment in liberty and self-governance without talking about the principles that guided its founding and founders. We don’t want to do that anymore. Which is why we are failing. (Totally heard Yoda in my head just now.)
I agree, both with the comment on respecting gato's intellect (which is why I read the newsletter) and with the caveat that I respect the two greatest Inklings more. Actually when Gato was writing about what he thinks is sensible religious or family experience or belief, I think he expressed one of the modern American cultural departures from authentic religious experience that many books have been written about (and in my opinion well and thoroughly showed this is not a rational possibility)--a strange religioiosity or spiritualism, which has no true god but the self, because the self creates the boundaries that encircle his or her god...the starbucks of religion, if you will. Contemporary religion's purpose is to make you feel good about yourself...which brings us full circle to the obvious conclusion, we don't need religion for that in the first place, which is I feel where Gato naturally arrives. Were his assumed axioms true, his conclusions would be correct, as to being irreligious (although his passion for freedom from tyranny as an objective virtue does not follow rationally from the same assumptions--rather the reverse.) However, this is not what any old truly religious faith teaches. Lewis and Tolkien belonged to the old-school camp of religion, namely, that if there is a God, a Creator, He is very much within His rights to say what is the meaning of our lives, and what is right and what is wrong. This premise of the nature of God and morality does not necessitate precluding the moral law that forbids setting yourself up above your neighbor as a law to him. Instead, the fundamental precept of God's nature gives human freedom a reasonable axiom on which to rest. If there is no God, the sacredness of life, or the value of free will, are neither objective virtues nor particularly necessary to existence. It is also God's divinity which establishes His right to hold a position of authority toward us that we do not have a right to hold toward each other. The Abolition of Man, and it's beautiful apology for the moral law (referred to within the work as "the Tao"), is probably the best simple consideration of the logical possibilities in this respect that I have personally ever read...I will not do better here, but, I do agree with Mr. McKinnon.
That’s fairly obvious. I can’t make you believe. God can. Do what you want, just understand that there are concrete, set consequences for every choice.
You have mentioned two admirable Catholics. But America is a Protestant nation founded by people running away from Europe like petulant children. It was never destined to last long. Protestant “churches” move with the times and cave to societal pressures. A true Church stands supreme and still in its teachings as the world goes in circules around it.
You are correct. I disagree slightly, in that i don’t believe in the slightest that the Catholic Church has adhered to, basically anything Jesus taught. But other than that (and i hope i don’t sound too harsh, i respect Catholicism immensely. I just don’t believe it faithfully adhere to Christs teachings.. i think it failed long ago, just as judaism veered from the original meaning of what the law of Moses pointed to)
Couple points, Lewis was and presably still is Anglican. And your commie pope has just about finished wokifying your religion into something you won't recognize in a few years. Look up the Synod on Synodality if you don't know. Guess the True Church went out with the Truth, you can pick the heretical and antichristian reforms of Gregory VII or schismatic subordination of the Gospel to the convenience of the hierarchy at Worms and Trent. But thanks for playing.
A dogmatic assertion of the inability of human beings to legitimately make dogmatic assertions kinda makes you look like you haven't thought this all the way through.
Haven't we all learned by now that 'science is only as trustworthy as the fellow collecting the data multiplied by the trustworthiness of the guy I tempering the day multiplied by 1/the size of the grant they get for 'the right' results which is usually nearly zero?
Funny how when we stopped having scientists who were raised in a Christian society science went straight to shit. We can't get back to the moon, we can't even make kids toys that are unbroken when you open the box(sorry as a parent that one chaps my ass), every new innovation proves to have been built on faked data backed up by ponzi scheme financing, which only works anyway because of a law absokving you of liability for your product say, bought by taking congressmen to strip clubs or whatever they do now. 2022 on substack is probably not the time or place to fly your impartial, seekers of scientific truth kite
The same can be said of the existence of Antarctica as far as you or i are concerned. But do you believe in Antarctica? Or do you simply believe the accounts of people who say they have been there?
I have come to the conclusion that the Atlantic and the National Geographic along with many of our formally respected informational providers, have actually turned out to be, "grooming tools," to get the the nobodies ready for the next control feature that those we have placed in "the Knower" power positions want to tell us is or should be. Without us nobodies giving our attention to the supposed "knowers" they too are reduced to nobodies. What ridiculous terms, each person is the one to know what is best for them in their particular life circumstances.
Yep, which is why I canceled my previously beloved subscription to Nat Geo Magazine. When I have a quiet moment I plan to go back through old issues and pinpoint when it all started to go downhill. The thing I’m afraid of is finding out that it’s always been on a downhill slope…
Came out in the early 1970s, decribes today's "extermination by migration" situation.
For anyone too woke/liberal: if a more prolific group migrates inot an area populated by a less prolific group, the first one will replace the second one as a pure function of numbers. No ill intent or any agenda on the part of the more prolific group is needed, it will happen on its own. For a real-life example, consider the virtual extinction of the black rat, once brown rats were introduced to their habitats.
Except human migration in the modern age does not happen on its own at all; it is very explicitly encouraged/discouraged, outlawed/incentivized, and facilitated/gatekept by the state, powers that lay claim to the borders of migration.
Migration in the post-WW2 world is nothing whatsoever like the largely organic movement of humans across porous land and sea borders for much of human history.
It has everything to do with population calibration by state actors.
All the yes, as they say. (Said perhaps, I'm not up to the hip lingo of the net - 4Chan is still new and rad, yes?)
Raspail describes what happens when a nation, then a continent, then a civilisation decides that to accept virtually unlimited migration is to be Good, and that it is a right to migrate from anywhere to Europe and by implication North America/Oceania.
This book is being shadowbanned or gently supressed and is marked as "right-wing extremism" and all the rest of the - completely unfounded and 100%GBA-ish - usual buzzwordsalad.
The simply saw what immediately happened to France during the 1960s when boatloads of algerians were allowed in, and extrapolated from that observation, something he wasn't alone in doing among french left/liberal-leaning intellectuals at the time.
Indeed, the topic of whether migrants should be encouraged to remain as they originally were (noble savage-archetype thinking) or were to be forcibly civilised, or encouraged as the euphemism was, raged hot in those circles here in Sweden too.
The noble savage/non-whites-are-naturally-good brand of racists won, as they did in the US too.
Sometmes I wonder when China will simply load up all cargo vessels they control with non-political prisoners and people from asylums and such, and drop them off on rafts outside US waters, Fidel Castro-style. I believe the official figure is 1 700 000, not including political prisoners.
Wonder what open boerders-types would say to that?
From wikipedia: 'National Geographic Partners, LLC is a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns 73% of shares) and the namesake non-profit scientific organization National Geographic Society (which owns 27%). The company oversees all commercial activities related to the Society, including magazine publications and television channels.' My guess would be about the time Disney took over. You could say the same about a lot of formerly great pubs
not the same, i agree, but better than the consumer reports, which in my opinion is mostly directed to wealthy people. I had a few free copies and read some at the library, and found them to be useless to me. The one I had in Europe compared everyday items (lots of food items too) and was way more useful.
I used to subscribe to that for many years, and I thought it was at its best ever at a point in the early 1990s. It had generally been left-leaning, but at that time it was publishing long, thoughtful articles that punctured some of the ruling canards. Suddenly it got a new editorial staff, and its quality plummeted into the flashy, substanceless, trendy, click-bait articles it carries today. I dropped it pretty quickly after that.
The first clue is that it’s in The Atlantic, written by an academic. I can’t help but feel gaslit.
I suspect he and his pals have a very clear idea of what the government should do to “protect” the pursuit of happiness, and it’s buried right there on page one with: you all just go ahead and learn to love each other and Big Brother and everything will be okay.
When the founders wrote “happiness,” they did not mean rainbows and unicorns. The idea of idle navel-gazing was not written into that document. Happiness IS to make your meaning by toil and introspection; to build your family, your business, your life.
He’s not all wrong about meaning or love, he’s just all wrong in implying that he knows what those are.
I can love my oppressor in the deepest and largest sense. But that doesn’t mean I need tolerate their usurpation of power. The love that is forgiveness sets *me* free, but it owes no favors to tyrants, petty or large.
This, to me, sheds light on my only criticism of this beautifully written piece.
It is easy to love those who are philosophically similar and embrace the individual's right to the pursuit if happiness.
It is quite possible to love those who seek their meaning through different means and sources, and who's motto could be, "we can agree, to disagree".
It is even likely we can love the occasional angry screamer, realizing they have simply made a temporary judgemental error.
The challenges, not addressed, are the zealots, who's source of meaning is the false ideologies of some meaningless aparachnik, fueling their own demise, and those who feed on the hate of the zealots they lead to destruction.
It is easy to love their souls, while not liking their earthly manifestations. But at some point one has to be able to defend their own rights, even at the cost of someone else's "opinion".
I've always thought that curiosity makes the cat - not kill it.
An existence without curiosity is to starve the mind of potential for happiness.
Openness allows for curiosity and the ability to embrace paradox. Certainty without contemplation is prison to the mind.
Contemplation is an incomplete/limited set without curiosity. IMO this leads to a life of searching for ONE elusive external key to open the prison door.
To be curious and welcome uncertainty is to fill your key ring with many keys that are critical for the mind to freely pursue individual happiness.
And as the keeper of three cats, I would suggest that we choose to welcome the little buggers into our lives and in our homes not so much for companionship but as teachers. There is something truly Zen about a cat, something which we mere humans strive to achieve. Even ancient human cultures like the Egyptians understood their magic.
The insatiable curiosities of the cat stand opposite the dullness, the mediocrity, and the mindless obedience to the collective which defines Twenty First Century human culture (I won't go so far as to say civilization). We can learn from them what we have lost.
I'm a catholic and my closest friends are unbelievers. And I'm the worst kind of catholic, one that actually believes in his choice of faith. I don't care what the next person does per se and agree with the thesis of this essay and for me it is essentially "leave me alone and if you want to know about me and what makes me tick, then ask". I won't push my beliefs on you, but I certainly will not let injustice, which seems to be the inverse of common sense, "coexist" with me. I won't accept RCMP officers trampling Iroquois elders. I won't accept abortion as a right. And I will not accept governments forcing me to do their bidding. Whether you believe in the Almighty or not, whether you have quirks that annoy me or not, either stand beside or step aside.
There is no contradiction or hypocrisy here as you seem to be implying with your question. I as in "me" will not accept it, no, and that is my right. I have the right to refuse, the right to disagree, the right to not support--the right to my autonomy. I will not accept a great many other things either. If you believe that my disagreement is infringing on yours or others' rights, that is a curious way to view the world, but I can see how one could get to that place.
>> If you believe that my disagreement is infringing on yours or others' rights, that is a curious way to view the world, but I can see how one could get to that place.
It's "curious" because it's not at all what is being presented, and you know it, and are probably either straw-manning or baiting defensiveness, neither of which are going to be indulged.
I've been wondering what made me different from so many people I know who have fallen prey to tribalism. I had to learn long ago to find happiness within myself. It's still a struggle, but I believe this article explains it better than anything I've seen thus far. Thank you! Good kitty! 😽
Turn away my friends. Reject this culture. Indulge in the felt presence of immediate experience. Mediate everything through your own being. Stop outsourcing your lives. You are more amazing to you than anyone else ever could be.
In this new culture trying to achieve you are ostracized. To be happy with your efforts is snubbed. Awards, like nobel prizes, are political and meaningless like most media/publications. We are plugged into a time of folly hiding our thoughts in fear- like unjabbed status.
This seems to be changing where I am at least, to a small degree. The more folk I talk to, and generally it's the down to earth types, the more seemingly universal they are in their stance that they will not submit to this nonsense again. They might have taken a jab but they stopped after one, for instance.
My teenage son frequently asks me "what is life?", my reply is "life is what YOU make it. Nobody else or any one thing can make you happy". We don't have a constitution in the UK but I recognise the division and political malaise. I think it's global. If people realised the answers are within themselves and within their power, the world would be a much better place for all of us. Like you say, too many look to external factors for elusive meaning and "happiness" and also - want it NOW!
Life is meant to find joy. However, joy, especially in this world of fleeting “happiness”, is not all that obvious to find and keep. In fact, the only way to find joy is to follow the teachings of Christ. There is no other way, try as we all might.
Love this & I agree with you, happiness is a choice.
We all will go through hard times & some will believe that better times are coming & work towards that goal & look for happiness in the little daily things.
The ‘wokester warrior dictators’ believe that other people owe them happiness & they should be given happiness & not have to work for it.
America is great because it states that our ‘Rights’ come from our Creator & NOT our government.
We have the Right to Life, Liberty & the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness!
Happiness is a choice that comes from within, (as you so wonderfully described). But the wokesters don’t understand this & they think that other people can give them happiness.
I am a Christian but I’m not ‘religious’, I believe most ‘religions’ end up becoming dictators instead of truly loving their Creator & other people.
For me, I seek to be more like my Creator Jesus every day.
The more we become like Him the more we love other people unconditionally & want to help others find true happiness & Love.
God is Love so the more we become like Him the better & more we can love others.
Those who do not ‘pursue’ happiness will never find it.
They think they will be happy if someone gives them riches but they won’t, look at all the celebrities that die miserable & lonely?
God gives all of us gifts & it’s our job to seek God & He will help us find our gifts as we journey through life.
Also what we sow in life we will reap, the ‘wokesters’ seek division, blaming others for their bad choices in life, they want something for nothing & are almost always ungrateful no matter what they are given for free.
I’m just a Grama & have made MANY of my own mistakes, if we don’t learn from our mistakes & change then we will continue to repeat the same mistakes over & over again.
Having a real ‘relationship’ with our Creator instead of ‘religion’ made all the difference in my life for the better.
Religion = manmade
Relationship = Putting God first & not man & not just talking to God & learning about God but listening & looking for His answers.
Our Creator speaks to us every day through so many ways, but we won’t hear Him if we aren’t looking & listening for Him.
The difference of America from most/all other countries is our Constitutional Rights are suppose to come from our ‘Creator’ & not our government, unfortunately many in our government & the world want to destroy our Rights by changing our constitution to say our rights come from our government & not our Creator.
Forgive me for rambling this morning & thank you for this article.
Unhappy people will seek others like them & follow the ‘Herd’ mentality.
They will fall for anything their Herd leader tells them is true, even if it’s not true.
It’s why they fall for the Climate Change Cult & really believe if they force all of us to stop eating meat & drive electric cars then we can change the weather?!?
Meanwhile all their hypocritical leaders at the WEF & UN fly in their gas hog jets & drive around in their gas hog limousines & feast on the best meats… 🤔🙄
And in their greed they will exploit you with false arguments and twisted doctrine. Their sentence of condemnation which God has decreed from a time long ago is not idle but is still in force, and their destruction and deepening misery is not asleep but is on its way. 2 Peter 2:3
or, And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you
maybe one of the things missing in his piece is the larger manufactured reality-show world we're living in and which is clearly fraying and TPTWB do their best to keep us under their spell.
As a ex-atheist, communist, libertarian, etc... I can honestly tell you:
Why I exist: To serve Jesus
For whom I will die: Jesus
The evidence of Jesus' resurrection is pretty convincing. I urge you to look it up. A great book with which to start: Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. A great youtube channel for skeptics: Mike Winger's Bible Thinker.
Every time I read a piece such as this, there is always this sentence--"you may have your own precepts and prescriptions... so long as these ideas and ideals... do not infringe the agency and liberty of others." But this seems to me backwards; not infringing on others is always an afterthought.
Try inverting this sentence; really this whole piece--"So long as your precepts and prescriptions do not infringe the agency and liberty of others, you may pursue your ideas and ideals to their fullest extent."
None of us can be allowed to pursue our ideas unchecked, because we all have truly bad ideas. When I was young, I used to think the world would be a much better place if everyone were like me. There'd be no murders, rapes, thefts. But as I got older I realized the world would be a horrible place because much good would go undone; many beautiful ideas would go unthought. I used to be repulsed by the evil I saw in others but now I am in constant awe of the good I find in others that I do not find in myself.
All of us must bump up against the "so long as it does not infringe on others" before we can know if our ideas and actions are "good". Happiness contains within it a measure of humility and self-sacrifice.
Marcus Aurelius and his fellow Stoics have much to teach the grievance chasers and professional victims about happiness:
• “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
• “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
I also highly recommend Oliver Burkeman’s “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.”
the grievous damage done to rising generations by teaching them to ascribe all adversity to external sources and squall for authority to come and provide redress instead of building the strength, confidence, and resilience to face and overcome it is one of the great tragedies of our time.
this "woke" philosophy lionizes weakness, vanity, and envy, excuses failure and failure to strive, and invalidates the accomplishments of those who do succeed.
it's the ethos of the wrecker and the self-indulgently vicious and vacuous.
they seek false meaning in destroying lives of actual meaning.
there can be no happiness nor progress there.
And even if all adversity was to come from external sources, so what? Would you scream and rant at the rain, is a question I've asked young people. The rain doesn't care about your plans for a beach party - the rain just is and there's nothing you can do about it as such, but you can decide how you make the most of whatever circumstances arise.
A hard sell even in a culture supportive of such old-timey values (older than judaism even) and all but impossible today, when it is as you say:
"this "woke" philosophy lionizes weakness, vanity, and envy, excuses failure and failure to strive, and invalidates the accomplishments of those who do succeed."
This is dehumanising in extremis - teaching children this is making them into slaves. Never teach a child what it cannot do: teach how and why and when, because doing so is also teaching how, when and why not to do a thing.
If you see what I mean?
100%.
Bill Gates would say he’s working on the rain issue. The desire to control nature in every way is a road to ruin. It’s one thing to try to understand, it’s another to say I know better (even before I understand).
🎯🎯🎯
The travesty is this “coddling of the American mind” (as Jonathan Haidt calls it) has been intentionally implemented via the K–16 inculcation system to manufacture obedient workers, a formula George Carlin captures succinctly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tetndXjHG1U
I remember this Carlin routine, thanks for supplying the link. Here's a quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti: “Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/343644-education-and-the-significance-of-life
Which came first the schools coddling or the parents ranting to the schools that little, 16 yo, Johnny needs someone to wipe his butt for him, because it's just so much work? I'm pretty sure I can answer that question, because my mother was a school teacher when the parent yelling started. Before the wholesale coddling by the school systems started.
Before: If I got in trouble at school, I got in more trouble at home.
Now: What do you mean disciplining my child! He's perfect!
Commie Carlin is not the answer.
I don't know; Carlin was pretty scorchingly witty in showing hypocrisy everywhere.
The Fool's prerogative is to mock the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed virtuous, and to remind that even the farts of an Emperor or a Saint smells like shit.
Enjoying a Fool good at his craft doesn't have to mean one also must use the Fool as an advisor.
Save one, my kids (3 millennials and 2 gen z, but what's in a name?) are self-reliant and in one case, despite being Canadian, would fit in quite well in Texas. I raised them hard, probably too hard, but they get it. And they thanked me for not subjecting them to public school. My wife and I saw the writing on the wall and adjusted for that, and my kids certainly did some suffering because of the choices we made, but I'd rather them be uncomfortable with this current world than demanding others be uncomfortable for them.
sounds like you did the right thing ! if I read what is being thaught in schools nowadays I would not send my cat to school !
I wouldn't send the cat to be tortured either.
absolutely not ! I would not even send a spider !
Great!! Thank you for doing that.
I just cannot love this entry,this response and You enough for this analysis!! It really is as simple as “ Take off the bossy pants.” The Bossy Pants in national dialog has really become narcissistic judgmental bullying. Truth and common sense have been obliterated by the need to put people in their place. It brings them pleasure no matter whether they are correct or dead wrong in their name calling. Professor Osters Atlantic piece is as close to an apology “we” will ever get.. “ so we were wrong, so what? We meant well which is more than your crazy conspiracies, so let it go!” .....
Those quotes rang a bell -- probably because I was just listening to this this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bguEiUgDA4
It's a video that I come back to often, and never fails to get my mind back on track when it's derailed by the insanity of the world. Because "the goal is not to be on the side of the majority, but to avoid finding ones self among the ranks of the insane."
thank you so much for posting this ! i immediately saved it.
I had a chuckle when that quote states, how change is inherent to nature. We need to send it to the climate change freaks !
I saved it as well. When my kids were little , I would pause and say “ Hey, Bossy McBossy, knock it off! “
Wonderful! Thanks for posting. I listened, then saved the link.
Will look into this vid. Thanks for posting it.
walking in the woods in thick layers of dry leaves. hugging a cat. cuddling up on the sofa with the dog. sunshine on your face. seeing lovely pictures of cats on el gato malo's blog... hehe. There that is what happiness is. If people disagree, I think they are seriously ill.
Amen!!
I think this is a false framing: Americans have not "fallen prey to the politics of division and turned upon one another." Half of America is suddenly taking relentless incoming fire from 360°. It used to be at least somewhat restrained, but catalyzed by Hillary's defeat in 2016, their rage has exploded and the masks have been ripped off to expose their demonic visage. Leftists fully intend the barrage aimed at us to be 'existential.' No more pussy-footing around. They believe they have the power to enforce their meaning upon us--and they may be right.
I reject the construct that there is reciprocity of action at play--that there is equal wrong on both sides. I know VERY few on the right who would force life choices upon the left. We simply wish to be left the hell alone. We can see that the 'current thing' is always just another excuse to implement the collective vision: communism, socialism, environmentalism, overpopulation, and Covid all different problems that--miraculously--share a common solution: hand over your liberty to our elite overlords.
PS: Arthur Brooks is a classic namby-pamby who STILL doesn't realize that we are in a war for the survival of liberty in the USA. He has perfected the genre of "Can't we all just get along" bleating--which is why, of course, that Atlantic has let him inside the walls. He's a pacifist in the face of the Orc charge.
I read a complaint from a writer that his family has disappeared from his life in the last few years, and he claimed all he ever did was tell them he was disappointed in them supporting Trump and rejecting mask and vaccine mandates because he cared for them. It was a mystery to him why they didn't reciprocate his obvious concern.
Yep, it is a mystery.
Well said! I am reminded of all the people (a person "trapped" in an unhappy marriage) that blame their unhappiness on another person. The truth is that you are unhappy because...wait for it...YOU are unhappy. You control your happiness, and your happiness is not based on things or ease in life.
Can't disagree with your Marcus take-aways. But have getting our thoughts in order the crucial thing is serving others - not at all, merely correct thinking. We are here to serve others (however obnoxious they might be!).
One does not preclude the other. Marcus himself stated:
“For as these were made to perform a particular function, and, by performing it according to their own constitution, gain in full what is due to them, so likewise, a human being is formed by nature to benefit others, and, when he has performed some benevolent action or accomplished anything else that contributes to the common good, he has done what he was constituted for, and has what is properly his.”
"Love one another" is incomplete. The Bible would say "Love one another, as I have loved you"
There is an example. A target. We are to love as God loves.
This. %100. “Love one another” is purposefully ambiguous when separated from the teachings of Christ, which illustrate what “love one another” actually looks like in practice.
I like this version:
Matthew 5:43-45:
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Yes. That builds nicely on John
"Love your neighbour as you love yourself."
I respect gato’s intellect immensely, however, two thinkers who i respect more are cs lewis and Tolkien. They understood the last something that gato is missing here: there is an actual God, objectively and unequivocally. and finding belief in that true God and His teachings, are what will lead to us being “complete”. This is what America has lost that we once had. There is no permanent or enduring “self actualization” without realizing that one is a child of God, and becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Absolutely. I would also add that even Voltaire, the father of the Enlightenment, thought God was "necessary" for a functioning society. Many atheists believe him to be one of their own, when in fact he despised atheism, calling it a "monstrous evil." The Communists have proven him to be a very prescient fellow, since the abolition of "the opiate of the people" is one of their goals. Murdering the recalcitrant is a feature, not a bug of this movement. Far more people have been murdered by the secular state than at the behest of those wearing "fancy hats." Not even close.
Before we have a right to pursue happiness, we need to have a right to life. Dostoevsky correctly wrote that "without God, all is permissible." Why, exactly, is human life sacred, if there is no God? We can pretend otherwise, but this question is playing out in the world today. They'll forcibly inject us, chip us, limit our freedom, and probably kill us to "save the planet."
Human rights and human dignity are notion which stem from religion. The ancient Greeks and Romans would laugh hysterically at the idea that "all men are created equal."
(My half-baked thoughts this morning. Might edit late...waiting for coffee to kick in...)
Good job with these thoughts Doc! You are titrated to effect. I am firmly in this camp, which is reinforced by wide observation and a lot of thought.
Thank you, Mrhounddog.
You know, if one wanted to, one could attack your claim about religion not having claimed as many lives as the varous flavours of marxism by pointing to the Meso/South American cultures of old, and to try and make a very sketchy total of all those killed in religious wars. I prefer to use it as an example of how religion very well may endorse mass murder, should that be part and parcel of its tenets.
Having said that, I very much doubt the indian peoples managed to total 50 000 000 dead from their ancestors crossing of the Bering strait to the coming of the spanish and others. I would also add that even the Crusades (which were a response to nearly 500 years of islamic aggression and genocidal practices - somehow woke and atheists always leave that part out...) were largely motivated by trade and economics, rather than religion on its own.
As for the human rights part, well the romans and greeks were far more religious than pretty much anyone now living in the West is, since we all - no matter our respective faiths or lack thereof, secular or not - are molded by both the Enlightenment and all the other ideas that flowed from it.
Not trying to be snide or anything, just adding points to consider.
I appreciate your thoughtful writing, Rikard, and know you're not being snide. I'll try not to be so strident. I can blame my uncaffeinated mind for the tone and choppiness of my post this morning...
Interesting point about the religiosity of the ancients. Nietzsche wrote ("Twilight of the Idols," maybe?) that only 30% of Germans of his time truly believed in God. I wonder what that number is at now.
I was an atheist for a chunk of years and really wrestled with the idea of God and morality. Religion can be, and has been, abused and used for nefarious reasons. It would be foolish for anyone to deny this, but it's equally foolish to think that religion is a source of strife, whose removal would usher in some utopia (Looking at you, John Lennon.)
Caffeine wore off hours ago. Long day of drilling teeth and ventilating Clantons. Gotta get to bed now. Good night for me, good morning to you.
Measuring faith in percentages seems... wrong somehow, like it's profaning something untangible - yet how else are we to measure it at all among groups?
The distinction I was going for is hard to grasp for all of us (or that's me projecting because it's hard to graspand and express for me) but for the ancients and upuntil the Renaissance not only was the divine (no matter the actual faith) thought of and about in the same way we might discuss whether or not amalgam is a good materialfor fillings or not - as somethings tangibly real; "Real in the same way this potato is real to us" to quote myself fromclass.
And everyone thought that way, barring oddball thinkers.
Today, it's largely the opposite (not really an opposite, just a figure of speech) simply due to all of us having for generations been inundated with the present way of perceiving and communicating reality: that materia and spirit is separate and distinct entities to be kept apart both in thought and practice.
(One does not have to be religious to find fault in that.)
I really struggle to understand modern day atheists. If you don't feel like belonging to a specific branch of a school of faith, then don't. And if they leave you in peace, what's the problem? This aggressive war on faith is not atheism, it's just a purityrannical religion where Nothing has been made god, it seems to me.
For Sweden, talking numbers, very few will actually answer that they have no religious faith or that they are atheists, but even fewer will call themselves christians (I could go into detail about the woke heresy of the swedish potestant church, let's save that for a later time) - however, 5 out of 6 will say they believe in "something", so even in "the most secular nation in the world" (which is bollocks) faith is actually a very ever-present part of society. This is discounting moslems, jews and such groups were ehtnicity and faith are almost genetically intertwined.
Personally, I have great respect for faith and for people living their faith - even when it's detrimental to their careers, social status and so on: people who are true to their selves. That I may well disagree on specific concrete issues doesn't change that.
It's too bad there's an ocean in the way: there's a lack of dentists here in the countryside and veterinarian dentists aren't allowed to see human patients.
At least I have the best excuse for spelling-errors now: ate welsh rarebit in bed lastnight and the keyboard of my laptop is now clogged with cheesy crumbs. :)
Everything you wrote about Sweden is occurring in the US now. Sincere, vibrant faith is alive and well in many parts, but the reins of power in the collapsing US are in the hands of an increasing and increasingly virulent group of "cultured despisers." Woke Christians, eager to sign on to whatever new bizarre fad our Regime promotes, quickly retrofit their religion to accept the tenets of our debased culture. It's been disheartening watching Francis' Roman Catholic Church throw its support behind "vaccines" and, now, the "climate crisis."
I live in a suburb of a large, deep blue city. The Protestant churches near me proudly fly BLM banners, have permanently incorporated the Rainbow Flag onto their billboard displaying service times, and even invited Reza Aslan (who wrote a book claiming that Jesus was just another run-of-the-mill zealot) to speak to the congregation just before Christmas a few years back.
A solid remnant of faithful will always exist across various denominations, but Christianity, like America itself, is being destroyed from within.
"Why, exactly, is human life sacred, if there is no God?"
Right on target.
The Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl has come up in this discussion. If human beings are little more than biological machines, no different from the animals, then we should not be surprised that they get treated like animals, piled into cattle cars to be sent to the slaughterhouse.
Exactly. And that's what's worrisome about what's going on.
Have you been to NS Lyons “The Upheaval” to read his long piece about Tolkien and Lewis? Very worth the time. So good.
Haha, that’s exactly what had them both top of mind for me today
As someone who extensively geeked out on LOTR and was raised on readings of Narnia, that piece expanded my view and appreciation of both writers. Our habit of over-philosophizing on our nature as humans (as even our revered Cat here does from time to time) makes for interesting thought, but without the anchor of the divine, it can lead down some dark paths. And you can’t accurately philosophize on the nature of Americans and America as an experiment in liberty and self-governance without talking about the principles that guided its founding and founders. We don’t want to do that anymore. Which is why we are failing. (Totally heard Yoda in my head just now.)
Fail we shall, if the foundation remember, we do not :)
Thanks. I will check it out.
I agree, both with the comment on respecting gato's intellect (which is why I read the newsletter) and with the caveat that I respect the two greatest Inklings more. Actually when Gato was writing about what he thinks is sensible religious or family experience or belief, I think he expressed one of the modern American cultural departures from authentic religious experience that many books have been written about (and in my opinion well and thoroughly showed this is not a rational possibility)--a strange religioiosity or spiritualism, which has no true god but the self, because the self creates the boundaries that encircle his or her god...the starbucks of religion, if you will. Contemporary religion's purpose is to make you feel good about yourself...which brings us full circle to the obvious conclusion, we don't need religion for that in the first place, which is I feel where Gato naturally arrives. Were his assumed axioms true, his conclusions would be correct, as to being irreligious (although his passion for freedom from tyranny as an objective virtue does not follow rationally from the same assumptions--rather the reverse.) However, this is not what any old truly religious faith teaches. Lewis and Tolkien belonged to the old-school camp of religion, namely, that if there is a God, a Creator, He is very much within His rights to say what is the meaning of our lives, and what is right and what is wrong. This premise of the nature of God and morality does not necessitate precluding the moral law that forbids setting yourself up above your neighbor as a law to him. Instead, the fundamental precept of God's nature gives human freedom a reasonable axiom on which to rest. If there is no God, the sacredness of life, or the value of free will, are neither objective virtues nor particularly necessary to existence. It is also God's divinity which establishes His right to hold a position of authority toward us that we do not have a right to hold toward each other. The Abolition of Man, and it's beautiful apology for the moral law (referred to within the work as "the Tao"), is probably the best simple consideration of the logical possibilities in this respect that I have personally ever read...I will not do better here, but, I do agree with Mr. McKinnon.
Much more eloquent than i can explain it. All i can say is, yes. This.
Believe in your god all you want, just don't tell me I have to.
That’s fairly obvious. I can’t make you believe. God can. Do what you want, just understand that there are concrete, set consequences for every choice.
I'm good with that.
I suggest you reread the "take off the bossypants" part.
You have mentioned two admirable Catholics. But America is a Protestant nation founded by people running away from Europe like petulant children. It was never destined to last long. Protestant “churches” move with the times and cave to societal pressures. A true Church stands supreme and still in its teachings as the world goes in circules around it.
You are correct. I disagree slightly, in that i don’t believe in the slightest that the Catholic Church has adhered to, basically anything Jesus taught. But other than that (and i hope i don’t sound too harsh, i respect Catholicism immensely. I just don’t believe it faithfully adhere to Christs teachings.. i think it failed long ago, just as judaism veered from the original meaning of what the law of Moses pointed to)
Couple points, Lewis was and presably still is Anglican. And your commie pope has just about finished wokifying your religion into something you won't recognize in a few years. Look up the Synod on Synodality if you don't know. Guess the True Church went out with the Truth, you can pick the heretical and antichristian reforms of Gregory VII or schismatic subordination of the Gospel to the convenience of the hierarchy at Worms and Trent. But thanks for playing.
Just listened to a long discussion about the Synod. Buckle up, people. Gonna get weird.
"A true Church stands supreme and still in its teachings as the world goes in circules around it."
The wahabis and the taliban would agree.
Well, to be sure, there is no "true Church." There's just marketing.
We’re all free to our opinions. But the truth is the truth. There is a true church. It was set up by Jesus Christ and then lost.
No human being can claim more than a belief in whatever they wish to regard as true.
But there's no ownership of "truth."
A dogmatic assertion of the inability of human beings to legitimately make dogmatic assertions kinda makes you look like you haven't thought this all the way through.
Haven't we all learned by now that 'science is only as trustworthy as the fellow collecting the data multiplied by the trustworthiness of the guy I tempering the day multiplied by 1/the size of the grant they get for 'the right' results which is usually nearly zero?
Funny how when we stopped having scientists who were raised in a Christian society science went straight to shit. We can't get back to the moon, we can't even make kids toys that are unbroken when you open the box(sorry as a parent that one chaps my ass), every new innovation proves to have been built on faked data backed up by ponzi scheme financing, which only works anyway because of a law absokving you of liability for your product say, bought by taking congressmen to strip clubs or whatever they do now. 2022 on substack is probably not the time or place to fly your impartial, seekers of scientific truth kite
Scientific inquiry considerably predates Christianity.
The same can be said of the existence of Antarctica as far as you or i are concerned. But do you believe in Antarctica? Or do you simply believe the accounts of people who say they have been there?
If you wish to engage in sophistry we can have fun here all day.
CS Lewis is the perfect example of intellectuals medicating their depression and anxiety with a hearty dose of religion.
This.
I have come to the conclusion that the Atlantic and the National Geographic along with many of our formally respected informational providers, have actually turned out to be, "grooming tools," to get the the nobodies ready for the next control feature that those we have placed in "the Knower" power positions want to tell us is or should be. Without us nobodies giving our attention to the supposed "knowers" they too are reduced to nobodies. What ridiculous terms, each person is the one to know what is best for them in their particular life circumstances.
Yep, which is why I canceled my previously beloved subscription to Nat Geo Magazine. When I have a quiet moment I plan to go back through old issues and pinpoint when it all started to go downhill. The thing I’m afraid of is finding out that it’s always been on a downhill slope…
Yeah I too am tired of being told that birding has a white people problem
Civilization has a white people problem that they are working to rectify as soon as feasible.
Have you read this one?
"The Camp of the Saints", by Jean Raspail.
Came out in the early 1970s, decribes today's "extermination by migration" situation.
For anyone too woke/liberal: if a more prolific group migrates inot an area populated by a less prolific group, the first one will replace the second one as a pure function of numbers. No ill intent or any agenda on the part of the more prolific group is needed, it will happen on its own. For a real-life example, consider the virtual extinction of the black rat, once brown rats were introduced to their habitats.
Except human migration in the modern age does not happen on its own at all; it is very explicitly encouraged/discouraged, outlawed/incentivized, and facilitated/gatekept by the state, powers that lay claim to the borders of migration.
Migration in the post-WW2 world is nothing whatsoever like the largely organic movement of humans across porous land and sea borders for much of human history.
It has everything to do with population calibration by state actors.
All the yes, as they say. (Said perhaps, I'm not up to the hip lingo of the net - 4Chan is still new and rad, yes?)
Raspail describes what happens when a nation, then a continent, then a civilisation decides that to accept virtually unlimited migration is to be Good, and that it is a right to migrate from anywhere to Europe and by implication North America/Oceania.
This book is being shadowbanned or gently supressed and is marked as "right-wing extremism" and all the rest of the - completely unfounded and 100%GBA-ish - usual buzzwordsalad.
The simply saw what immediately happened to France during the 1960s when boatloads of algerians were allowed in, and extrapolated from that observation, something he wasn't alone in doing among french left/liberal-leaning intellectuals at the time.
Indeed, the topic of whether migrants should be encouraged to remain as they originally were (noble savage-archetype thinking) or were to be forcibly civilised, or encouraged as the euphemism was, raged hot in those circles here in Sweden too.
The noble savage/non-whites-are-naturally-good brand of racists won, as they did in the US too.
Sometmes I wonder when China will simply load up all cargo vessels they control with non-political prisoners and people from asylums and such, and drop them off on rafts outside US waters, Fidel Castro-style. I believe the official figure is 1 700 000, not including political prisoners.
Wonder what open boerders-types would say to that?
From wikipedia: 'National Geographic Partners, LLC is a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns 73% of shares) and the namesake non-profit scientific organization National Geographic Society (which owns 27%). The company oversees all commercial activities related to the Society, including magazine publications and television channels.' My guess would be about the time Disney took over. You could say the same about a lot of formerly great pubs
I canceled my subscription to Consumer Reports - of all things- years ago...because they were starting to champion anti- freedom ideals.
I miss the very useful reviews of products.
there is a website that lists recalls, https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
not the same, i agree, but better than the consumer reports, which in my opinion is mostly directed to wealthy people. I had a few free copies and read some at the library, and found them to be useless to me. The one I had in Europe compared everyday items (lots of food items too) and was way more useful.
I think it became "in your face" around 2010, but it was probably incremental for at least a decade or two prior to that.
In the early 1930's there was a wonderful spread in Nat Geo about the success and prosperity of Italian occupied Ethiopia.
Ditto for Scientific American. But that was going already around 30 years ago when I failed to renew.
I used to subscribe to that for many years, and I thought it was at its best ever at a point in the early 1990s. It had generally been left-leaning, but at that time it was publishing long, thoughtful articles that punctured some of the ruling canards. Suddenly it got a new editorial staff, and its quality plummeted into the flashy, substanceless, trendy, click-bait articles it carries today. I dropped it pretty quickly after that.
The first clue is that it’s in The Atlantic, written by an academic. I can’t help but feel gaslit.
I suspect he and his pals have a very clear idea of what the government should do to “protect” the pursuit of happiness, and it’s buried right there on page one with: you all just go ahead and learn to love each other and Big Brother and everything will be okay.
When the founders wrote “happiness,” they did not mean rainbows and unicorns. The idea of idle navel-gazing was not written into that document. Happiness IS to make your meaning by toil and introspection; to build your family, your business, your life.
He’s not all wrong about meaning or love, he’s just all wrong in implying that he knows what those are.
I can love my oppressor in the deepest and largest sense. But that doesn’t mean I need tolerate their usurpation of power. The love that is forgiveness sets *me* free, but it owes no favors to tyrants, petty or large.
This, to me, sheds light on my only criticism of this beautifully written piece.
It is easy to love those who are philosophically similar and embrace the individual's right to the pursuit if happiness.
It is quite possible to love those who seek their meaning through different means and sources, and who's motto could be, "we can agree, to disagree".
It is even likely we can love the occasional angry screamer, realizing they have simply made a temporary judgemental error.
The challenges, not addressed, are the zealots, who's source of meaning is the false ideologies of some meaningless aparachnik, fueling their own demise, and those who feed on the hate of the zealots they lead to destruction.
It is easy to love their souls, while not liking their earthly manifestations. But at some point one has to be able to defend their own rights, even at the cost of someone else's "opinion".
'social scientist'
That kind of says it all.
I see this as a follow-on piece to the other Atlantic article which begs for a pardon for the pandemic crimes. So it works like this:
1. I'm not responsible for what I did to you.
2. I know you are angry, but you must learn to be happy. You must do that, because I already excused myself for my crimes against you.
Atlantic magazine - the new journal of abusive relationships.
Very astute observation - when you mention it, it seems obvious. Especially when the texts are read together. Well spotted.
It speaks libraries of how detached intellectuals are from everyday life of common people.
This article made me happy this morning...:)
I've always thought that curiosity makes the cat - not kill it.
An existence without curiosity is to starve the mind of potential for happiness.
Openness allows for curiosity and the ability to embrace paradox. Certainty without contemplation is prison to the mind.
Contemplation is an incomplete/limited set without curiosity. IMO this leads to a life of searching for ONE elusive external key to open the prison door.
To be curious and welcome uncertainty is to fill your key ring with many keys that are critical for the mind to freely pursue individual happiness.
What an image you evoked:
In the one corner, a key-ring with lots of keys (and lockpicks): in the other the jackboot, the crowbar and the battering ram.
All have their place and their use, but those are rarely if ever interchangeable.
As Integrity said, very well stated Ryan.
And as the keeper of three cats, I would suggest that we choose to welcome the little buggers into our lives and in our homes not so much for companionship but as teachers. There is something truly Zen about a cat, something which we mere humans strive to achieve. Even ancient human cultures like the Egyptians understood their magic.
The insatiable curiosities of the cat stand opposite the dullness, the mediocrity, and the mindless obedience to the collective which defines Twenty First Century human culture (I won't go so far as to say civilization). We can learn from them what we have lost.
This was beautifully said.
I may be biased, however, as I have always self described as " insatiable curious" .
I'm a catholic and my closest friends are unbelievers. And I'm the worst kind of catholic, one that actually believes in his choice of faith. I don't care what the next person does per se and agree with the thesis of this essay and for me it is essentially "leave me alone and if you want to know about me and what makes me tick, then ask". I won't push my beliefs on you, but I certainly will not let injustice, which seems to be the inverse of common sense, "coexist" with me. I won't accept RCMP officers trampling Iroquois elders. I won't accept abortion as a right. And I will not accept governments forcing me to do their bidding. Whether you believe in the Almighty or not, whether you have quirks that annoy me or not, either stand beside or step aside.
I won't push my beliefs on you + I won't accept abortion as a right?
There is no contradiction or hypocrisy here as you seem to be implying with your question. I as in "me" will not accept it, no, and that is my right. I have the right to refuse, the right to disagree, the right to not support--the right to my autonomy. I will not accept a great many other things either. If you believe that my disagreement is infringing on yours or others' rights, that is a curious way to view the world, but I can see how one could get to that place.
But others do not have the right to that autonomy, in accordance with your beliefs?
>> If you believe that my disagreement is infringing on yours or others' rights, that is a curious way to view the world, but I can see how one could get to that place.
It's "curious" because it's not at all what is being presented, and you know it, and are probably either straw-manning or baiting defensiveness, neither of which are going to be indulged.
You read my mind so well that I have to concede. Bravo.
Just returning the favor.
This!! Bravo.
I've been wondering what made me different from so many people I know who have fallen prey to tribalism. I had to learn long ago to find happiness within myself. It's still a struggle, but I believe this article explains it better than anything I've seen thus far. Thank you! Good kitty! 😽
That plus in my day (typing that makes me feel old), it was cool to be non-conformist.
Turn away my friends. Reject this culture. Indulge in the felt presence of immediate experience. Mediate everything through your own being. Stop outsourcing your lives. You are more amazing to you than anyone else ever could be.
In this new culture trying to achieve you are ostracized. To be happy with your efforts is snubbed. Awards, like nobel prizes, are political and meaningless like most media/publications. We are plugged into a time of folly hiding our thoughts in fear- like unjabbed status.
This seems to be changing where I am at least, to a small degree. The more folk I talk to, and generally it's the down to earth types, the more seemingly universal they are in their stance that they will not submit to this nonsense again. They might have taken a jab but they stopped after one, for instance.
Yes ^^^
I love this!
My teenage son frequently asks me "what is life?", my reply is "life is what YOU make it. Nobody else or any one thing can make you happy". We don't have a constitution in the UK but I recognise the division and political malaise. I think it's global. If people realised the answers are within themselves and within their power, the world would be a much better place for all of us. Like you say, too many look to external factors for elusive meaning and "happiness" and also - want it NOW!
Life is meant to find joy. However, joy, especially in this world of fleeting “happiness”, is not all that obvious to find and keep. In fact, the only way to find joy is to follow the teachings of Christ. There is no other way, try as we all might.
Love this & I agree with you, happiness is a choice.
We all will go through hard times & some will believe that better times are coming & work towards that goal & look for happiness in the little daily things.
The ‘wokester warrior dictators’ believe that other people owe them happiness & they should be given happiness & not have to work for it.
America is great because it states that our ‘Rights’ come from our Creator & NOT our government.
We have the Right to Life, Liberty & the PURSUIT of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness!
Happiness is a choice that comes from within, (as you so wonderfully described). But the wokesters don’t understand this & they think that other people can give them happiness.
I am a Christian but I’m not ‘religious’, I believe most ‘religions’ end up becoming dictators instead of truly loving their Creator & other people.
For me, I seek to be more like my Creator Jesus every day.
The more we become like Him the more we love other people unconditionally & want to help others find true happiness & Love.
God is Love so the more we become like Him the better & more we can love others.
Those who do not ‘pursue’ happiness will never find it.
They think they will be happy if someone gives them riches but they won’t, look at all the celebrities that die miserable & lonely?
God gives all of us gifts & it’s our job to seek God & He will help us find our gifts as we journey through life.
Also what we sow in life we will reap, the ‘wokesters’ seek division, blaming others for their bad choices in life, they want something for nothing & are almost always ungrateful no matter what they are given for free.
I’m just a Grama & have made MANY of my own mistakes, if we don’t learn from our mistakes & change then we will continue to repeat the same mistakes over & over again.
Having a real ‘relationship’ with our Creator instead of ‘religion’ made all the difference in my life for the better.
Religion = manmade
Relationship = Putting God first & not man & not just talking to God & learning about God but listening & looking for His answers.
Our Creator speaks to us every day through so many ways, but we won’t hear Him if we aren’t looking & listening for Him.
The difference of America from most/all other countries is our Constitutional Rights are suppose to come from our ‘Creator’ & not our government, unfortunately many in our government & the world want to destroy our Rights by changing our constitution to say our rights come from our government & not our Creator.
Forgive me for rambling this morning & thank you for this article.
God bless you all❣️
💙✝️🦋🙏🏼🌍🌎🌏
"But the wokesters don’t understand this & they think that other people can give them happiness."
Another possibility: Misery loves company.
They are miserable & seek to spread their misery.
Sadly I do believe you are right.
Unhappy people will seek others like them & follow the ‘Herd’ mentality.
They will fall for anything their Herd leader tells them is true, even if it’s not true.
It’s why they fall for the Climate Change Cult & really believe if they force all of us to stop eating meat & drive electric cars then we can change the weather?!?
Meanwhile all their hypocritical leaders at the WEF & UN fly in their gas hog jets & drive around in their gas hog limousines & feast on the best meats… 🤔🙄
And in their greed they will exploit you with false arguments and twisted doctrine. Their sentence of condemnation which God has decreed from a time long ago is not idle but is still in force, and their destruction and deepening misery is not asleep but is on its way. 2 Peter 2:3
or, And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you
Beautiful. The only thing I would say differently is this:
Pursue happiness, and it will elude you. Pursue what is worthy, and happiness will come and perch on your shoulder like a butterfly.
maybe one of the things missing in his piece is the larger manufactured reality-show world we're living in and which is clearly fraying and TPTWB do their best to keep us under their spell.
Gato, the biggest bossypants of all is our government. Until we replace that bossypants, none of us
can pursue freedom.
As a ex-atheist, communist, libertarian, etc... I can honestly tell you:
Why I exist: To serve Jesus
For whom I will die: Jesus
The evidence of Jesus' resurrection is pretty convincing. I urge you to look it up. A great book with which to start: Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. A great youtube channel for skeptics: Mike Winger's Bible Thinker.
Every time I read a piece such as this, there is always this sentence--"you may have your own precepts and prescriptions... so long as these ideas and ideals... do not infringe the agency and liberty of others." But this seems to me backwards; not infringing on others is always an afterthought.
Try inverting this sentence; really this whole piece--"So long as your precepts and prescriptions do not infringe the agency and liberty of others, you may pursue your ideas and ideals to their fullest extent."
None of us can be allowed to pursue our ideas unchecked, because we all have truly bad ideas. When I was young, I used to think the world would be a much better place if everyone were like me. There'd be no murders, rapes, thefts. But as I got older I realized the world would be a horrible place because much good would go undone; many beautiful ideas would go unthought. I used to be repulsed by the evil I saw in others but now I am in constant awe of the good I find in others that I do not find in myself.
All of us must bump up against the "so long as it does not infringe on others" before we can know if our ideas and actions are "good". Happiness contains within it a measure of humility and self-sacrifice.