Quotulatiousness

June 21, 2024

From “invention” to “tradition”

Filed under: Architecture, Britain, Europe, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander considers some “traditions” which were clearly invented much more recently than participants might believe:

Two NYC synagogues, one in Moorish Revival style and the other is some form of modernism (you can tell it’s not Brutalism because it’s not all decaying concrete). Like Scott, I vastly prefer the one on the left even if it isn’t totally faithful to the Moroccan original design.

    A: I like Indian food.

    B: Oh, so you like a few bites of flavorless rice daily? Because India is a very poor country, and that’s a more realistic depiction of what the average Indian person eats. And India has poor food safety laws – do you like eating in unsanitary restaurants full of rats? And are you condoning Narendra Modi’s fascist policies?

    A: I just like paneer tikka.

This is how most arguments about being “trad” sound to me. Someone points out that they like some feature of the past. Then other people object that this feature is idealized, the past wasn’t universally like that, and the past had many other bad things.

But “of the past” is just meant to be a pointer! “Indian food” is a good pointer to paneer tikka even if it’s an idealized view of how Indians actually eat, even if India has lots of other problems!

In the same way, when people say they like Moorish Revival architecture or the 1950s family structure or whatever, I think of these as pointers. It’s fine if the Moors also had some bad buildings, or not all 1950s families were really like that. Everyone knows what they mean!

But there’s another anti-tradition argument which goes deeper than this. It’s something like “ah, but you’re a hypocrite, because the people of the past weren’t trying to return to some idealized history. They just did what made sense in their present environment.”

There were hints of this in Sam Kriss’ otherwise-excellent article about a fertility festival in Hastings, England. A celebrant dressed up as a green agricultural deity figure, paraded through the street, and then got ritually murdered. Then everyone drank and partied and had a good time.

Most of the people involved assumed it derived from the Druids or something. It was popular not just as a good party, but because it felt like a connection to primeval days of magic and mystery. But actually, the Hastings festival dates from 1983. If you really stretch things, it’s loosely based on similar rituals from the 1790s. There’s no connection to anything older than that.

Kriss wrote:

    I don’t think the Jack in the Green is worse because it’s not really an ancient fertility rite, but I do think it’s a little worse because it pretends to be … tradition pretends to be a respect for the past, but it refuses to let the past inhabit its own particular time: it turns the past into eternity. The opposite of tradition is invention.

    Tradition is fake, and invention is real. Most of the human activity of the past consists of people just doing stuff … they didn’t need a reason. It didn’t need to be part of anything ancient. They were having fun.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about [a seagull float in the Hastings parade] … in the procession, the shape of the seagull became totemic. It had the intensity of a symbol, without needing to symbolise anything in particular. Another word for a symbol that burns through any referent is a god. I wasn’t kidding when I said I felt the faint urge to worship it. I don’t think it would be any more meaningful if someone had dug up some thousand-year-old seagull fetishes from a nearby field. It’s powerful simply because of what it is. Invention, just doing stuff, is the nebula that nurses newborn gods.

I’m nervous to ever disagree with Sam Kriss about ancient history, but this strikes me as totally false.

Modern traditionalists look back fondly on Victorian times. But the Victorians didn’t get their culture by just doing stuff without ever thinking of the past. They were writing pseudo-Arthurian poetry, building neo-Gothic palaces, and painting pre-Raphaelite art hearkening back to the early Renaissance. And the Renaissance itself was based on the idea of a re-naissance of Greco-Roman culture. And the Roman Empire at its peak spent half of its cultural energy obsessing over restoring the virtue of the ancient days of the Roman Republic:

    Then none was for a party;
    Then all were for the state;
    Then the great man helped the poor,
    And the poor man loved the great:
    Then lands were fairly portioned;
    Then spoils were fairly sold:
    The Romans were like brothers
    In the brave days of old.

    Now Roman is to Roman
    More hateful than a foe,
    And the Tribunes beard the high,
    And the Fathers grind the low.
    As we wax hot in faction,
    In battle we wax cold:
    Wherefore men fight not as they fought
    In the brave days of old.

(of course, this isn’t from a real Imperial Roman poem — it’s by a Victorian Brit pretending to be a later Roman yearning for the grand old days of Republican Rome. And it’s still better than any poem of the last fifty years, fight me.)

As for the ancient Roman Republic, they spoke fondly of a Golden Age when they were ruled by the god Saturn. As far as anyone knows, Saturn is a wholly mythical figure. But if he did exist, there are good odds he inspired his people (supposedly the fauns and nymphs) through stories of some even Goldener Age that came before.

Fractal dissidence

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Fortissax notes some historic parallels between the many, many factions in Spain leading up to the catastrophe of the Spanish Civil War and the many, many factions of the dissident right in the Anglosphere and the rest of the diminishing western world today:

The Spanish Civil War, approximate Nationalist (pink) and Republican (blue) areas of control in September, 1936.
Map by NordNordWest with modifications by “Sting” via Wikimedia Commons.

We have serious issues on our hands. We must each contribute through our respective projects and instigate real-world change by pen, sword, or ploughshare. We don’t have time to split, fracture, insult, belittle, destroy each other’s reputations, or engage in character assassination. I liken the factionalism of the (terminally) online right to that of the factions in the Spanish Civil War. The online right is important because the internet is the new “public square”. As influential or more, as mass-action in living, breathing cities. The influence of discourse, media, and content on the internet is insurmountable. While small locally, the impact of each content maker, producer, writer, poet, and videographer is huge. We are part of a civilizational, some would even say global, culture, yet not of it. I will provide examples of some similarities I notice while reading through Peter Kemp’s “Mine Were of Trouble”.

In the buildup to the Spanish Civil War, you had conservative patriots (populists, anti-woke patriot-normies), traditionalist Christian monarchists (who parallel Christ-Is-King people), and the Falangist (who parallel the Vitalists, secular-right). This roughly, parallels the groupings of the Dissident Right today. I believe this is a good case study. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. All of them had a lot more in common than they opposed. For example, consider the following points:

  • Anti-Communism: Both the Falangists and the Requetés were strongly anti-communist and opposed the Spanish Republic, which they associated with communism, liberalism, and anarchism. They viewed the leftist factions as threats to Spanish traditions, religion, and social order. Today, the Managerial Elite of every single western country has weaponized the New-Left of decades past to use as shock troops against the good people of each nation. We all agree the mass psychosis of capital backed DEI civic cult, their nihilistic, suicidal anti-life acolytes are the most destructive group the human species has ever seen.
  • Support for Strong Leaders: Both groups eventually supported General Francisco Franco’s leadership, despite some initial differences in ideology and goals. Franco’s ability to unify the Nationalist forces was crucial to their eventual victory. In many Western countries today, people are rallying behind Trump, Bardella, Farage, Bernier to name a few. They are not perfect, but they are increasingly influenced by Dissident Right ideas, and culture.
  • Nationalism: The Falangists and the Requetés were deeply nationalist, believing in the unity and greatness of Spain. They were committed to preserving Spain as a single, undivided nation-state. Today, Dissidents of all stripes support nationalism an civilizational cooperation against outside threats like China, the emerging Republic of India, and the Islamic world, who seek to make excursions in Europe.
  • Militarism: Both factions believed in the application of force when necessary to achieve their goals and restore order in Spain. They were heavily involved in the Nationalist military efforts during the civil war. Both the religious right, and the secular Vitalists ostensibly believe a strong body, mind and soul are necessary to enact change. Both hold excellence as a core value, although perhaps one more than the other.
  • Benevolent Authoritarianism: Both the Falangists and the Requetés supported authoritarian forms of government. While the Falangists leaned towards a Nietzsche inspired model, the Requetés, rooted in traditional Christian monarchism, were also supportive of strong, centralized authority to maintain order and uphold traditional values.
  • Natural Social Order: Both groups believed in a natural social order or organic hierarchy. This concept held that society should be structured according to natural, hierarchical lines, which they saw as inherent and beneficial for maintaining stability and harmony. Do the religious right, and the Vitalists not believe this? That the strong, the beautiful, healthy, are fit to lead? That the most capable should be given the opportunity to advance socially?
  • Community Over Individual: While recognizing and respecting the Western man’s innate streak of liberty and individualism, both groups prioritized the needs and values of the community over the individual. They believed that individuals found their true purpose and identity within the larger community and that communal values should guide social and political life. When everyone is doing their part, all prosper.

“Neoliberal ideology is antidemocratic at its very core. Its aim is to give free-reign over our societies to corporations, not citizens”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Worstall responds to a recent Medium essay by Julia Steinberger which illustrates that “neoliberal” has joined “fascist” as a generic term to indicate strong disapproval of a person, organization, or idea:

The idea that an adult woman can believe these things is just amazeballs. But here we are. A tweet from Julia Steinberger leads to her Medium essay about what’s wrong with the world.

An upheaval in 10 chapters:

    1. The cause. We know the climate crisis is brought to us by highly unequal and undemocratic economic systems.

Err, no? Emissions are emissions. 100 people emitting one tonne each is exactly the same as 1 person emitting 100 tonnes. Sure, it’s true that a more unequal society will have more people emitting those 100 tonne personal amounts. But a more equal society will have more people able to emit another 1 tonne each. For, more equality is by definition the movement of some of those assets of the richer to those poorer — the economic assets which either allow or do the emitting. Sure, Jim Ratcliffe’s £50,000 private jet flight emits more than my £100 Easyjet one. But if we take the £50k off Jim and give it to 500 folk like me then all 500 of us might spend the marginal income on an Easyjet flight each — which would be more emissions than Jim’s spending of the money.

It simply is not true that economic inequality is the heart, the core or the cause of climate change. It’s idiocy to think it is too.

Of course, we know what’s happening here. Climate Change is Bad, M’Kay? Which it is, obviously. Economic inequality is Bad, M’Kay? Well, there the evidence is a great deal more mixed but whatever. But in the minds of the stupid all bad things have the same cause. So, if inequality is bad, climate change is bad, then they must be the same thing because they’re Bad, M’Kay?

    2. The rise. The recent history of these economic systems, in the Americas and Eurasia, is dominated by the ascendance of neoliberal ideology.

Oh, that is good. Given that I am a neoliberal — a fully paid up one, Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute and all — that’s very good. Given HS2, looming wealth taxation, the increased bite of idiot regulation and all that I can’t say that I see neoliberalism as winning right now but that might depend upon your starting point. If you’re a socialist — or an idiot but I repeat myself — you might well regard the plenitude of bananas in the supermarket as neoliberal. After all, that is something that socialism never did achieve.

    3. The threat. Neoliberal ideology is antidemocratic at its very core. Its aim is to give free-reign over our societies to corporations, not citizens.

And, well, you know, bollocks. The very beating heart of neoliberalism is that corporations need to be controlled and they’re best controlled by the citizens. In the form of free markets rather than voting on which bureaucrats get the gold plated pension, true. But neoliberals are between indifferent and actually against capitalist power. The whole nub of the idea is that markets do the job of controlling capitalists better than bureaucrats, politicians or, obviously, capitalists.

There’s not really any way for her thesis to survive after getting so much of the basics wrong, is there?

But just one more tidbit:

    Hayek and his neoliberal colleagues now needed another, antidemocratic way, to organise society. They didn’t want democracy, but they wanted some kind of self-maintaining organisation — by which they meant hierarchy. Organisation was supposed to be supplied by the market, and hierarchy by competition within markets. (It’s worth noting that neoliberals in the 1950s did not, although they should have, predict that unfettered markets lead to concentrations in monopolies or cartels. They would arguably disapprove of the vast corporations running our current economies, even though their market-above-democracy policies predictably brought them into being.)

Well, that wasn’t actually the last tidbit. But the idea that Friedman, Mises, Menger, Hayek and the rest didn’t worry about monopolies? Jesu C is really bouncin’ on that pogo stick right now. And then the idea that democracy will be better bulwark against monopolies than markets? Can you actually do backflips on a pogo stick?

All Of The Saws One Video

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Wood By Wright How To
Published Mar 7, 2024

There are a lot of saws. we may call them all hand saws but there are many names and types of saws.
(more…)

QotD: Identity fetishism

Filed under: Books, Health, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

This is going to sound really weird, but bear with me: I’d like you to check out Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder, by Sam Fussell. It was written in the early 90s (I think) describing the bodybuilding scene of the mid-1980s, and when I first read it, twenty-odd years ago, it came off like the tale of a recovered alcoholic, or more accurately a well-controlled schizophrenic — the male version of all those mental illness memoirs the chicks were into back then (Prozac Nation; Girl, Interrupted, and so on). Certainly Fussell himself pitched it that way — he says that even bodybuilders call their thing “the disease”. From the Current Year’s perspective, though, it looks a lot more like the leading edge of an increasingly common phenomenon that I’m going to call “identity fetishism”.

Fussell is almost embarrassingly frank about why he got into bodybuilding: He was terrified. A scrawny, desperately insecure guy, he just couldn’t handle the social pressures of life in New York. He saw muscles as armor. If he made his exterior so intimidating that no one would want to get close to him he’d never have to get close to anyone. The whole thing is a sustained exercise in fremdschämen — Fussell is a hard guy to like before his transformation, and frankly repulsive afterwards. It’s a short read, and fascinating, but it’s not an easy one.

Do slog through it, though, and I think you’ll see what I mean. The thing that prevents so many of us from really getting into the Left’s headspace, I think, is sheer exhaustion. Forget hardcore SJWs for a sec; just think of what it must take to be, say, a hipster. I mean, seriously, just look at this fucking hipster. The time, the money, the sheer goddamn effort it must take! I’m bushed just writing about it, and that’s nothing compared to what Fussell did.

If you’re a weightlifter, you know. If you’re not, trust me, you don’t want to know. Same deal with endurance athletes, of course, and so on — I’m sure “runner’s high” is real, and it’s great, but son, I really don’t want to experience it. I have experienced “the pump”, famously described by Arnold himself as “like cumming”, but trust me, drugs are a lot better if you just want to get high, because getting to “the pump” fucking hurts. A lot. See Fussell for details.1

Much easier, then, to invest all that time and energy and money into an outward show that, though it no doubt costs as much — perhaps more! — isn’t nearly as painful (I’m sure getting elaborate tats hurts, but if the choice was between that or legs day, I’d be The Illustrated Man). Best of all, of course, is one that doesn’t take anything but time — you know, like, say, Twitter …

All that no doubt seems like a long ride for a short payoff, but unlike my infamously lax attitude towards “the Classics”, I’m going to insist that if you want to get the point of this one — and I consider it important enough to have invested all these words in it — you’re really going to have to go read the book. Fussell is self-aware enough to see himself for what he is, and the Twitterati are of course oblivious, but the psychology is the same. It’s a fetishized identity, and it’s terrifying, because those are our rulers.

Severian, “Identity Fetishism”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-05-24.

    1. Worst of all, you don’t get it during “legs day”, the most excruciating part of weightlifting, which is why so many guys skip it. It’s nothing but pain. I was never more than a moderately serious weightlifter back in my youth, but that’s the sole criterion of seriousness — do you skip legs day? If yes, then get back to Planet Fitness, you poseur.

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