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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   14166 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Good morning! Hope your week is off to a good start fellow Mottizens. I was tickled pink to find that the Motte just went through it's fourth birthday, apparently, and I strongly agree with nara that this place is one of the best, if not the best, places to find genuinely open political discourse on the internet.

Anyway, I want to talk about religion & modernity. The so-called 'RETVRN traditionalists' and neo-reactionaries, and how some insights from them play into the broader culture war. I was reading a post from a friend of mine on Substack, and he makes a great point with regard to religious folks trying to turn back the clock, so to speak:

The traditionalist response (reaction, more properly) is simply to deny that modernity ever happened, to summon us back to a world where we believe “what the church teaches” (whatever church the given traditionalist may have decided to adhere to), where we simply accept late ancient (or medieval) metaphysics and morals and social structures, where we simply pretend that we can exist as a beseiged outpost of this kind of religious revanchism, a faithful remnant, and make a little world for ourselves.

It’s a lie. We don’t believe it. I certainly don’t, and I don’t think anyone else really does either. We are all still moderns. Our instincts are modern. Our instincts are, by any reasonable description, liberal. The effort to force ourselves into the thoroughly pre-modern mindset is just like my hopeless attempt to inwardly resuscitate a Ptolemaic cosmology. It can’t finally work. We are who we are, in the context we are, and very fundamental elements of our understanding of and feeling of the world are inescapably at odds with the past we say we want to reanimate and reinhabit.

I am sorry to be the bearer of these bad tidings to the young people coming in droves into the traditional churches, desperately seeking some kind of firm foundation that’s been stolen from them. They feel cheated and abused, because they have been.

However, our inescapably modern and liberal instincts, are, in many cases, actually very good. I think my fundamental regard for the mystery of the human person and human liberty is indeed very good. I will die on this hill.

I strongly agree that we live in a liberal time, and have deeply liberal instincts. We can't just pretend that we don't live our lives in a liberal way, and I suspect most people talking about a return to traditionalism are, as @2rafa has (perhaps uncharitably) opined on before, simply LARPers.

This relates to the culture war for the simply fact that I think just like the religious piece, most conservatives that ostensibly want to tear down the liberal establishment, actually don't want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy. It's all well and good to make arguments about tradition and the importance of paternal authority etc in the abstract, but personally submitting yourself to someone else's rule (in a very direct way, I understand that we are ruled indirectly now anyway) would, I suspect, be a bridge too far.

In addition though, I simply think that modern liberty is good. I'm a sort of reluctant conservative I'll admit, but even in the traditional conservative picture of the world, I think that personal freedoms from the state and even to a certain extent within traditional communities are great. To me, the project of the conservative in the modern world is not to sort of force us via governmental apparatus back into some halycon pre-modernity days. Instead, the conservative impulse should be focused towards explaining and convincing people in a deep and genuine way that living in a more traditional way is better for society, and better for people in particular.

Going off that last bit - once you get some years under your belt, it becomes clear from a personal standpoint that a more controlled lifestyle is just better. That saying that you have no head if you aren't a conservative in your 30s rings true in large part, in my humble opinion, because of this personal understanding. If you drink all the time, eat unhealthy food, smoke constantly, etc, you will very quickly find that your 'personal freedom' isn't worth much when you constantly feel terrible.

While convincing people may be much harder, I am convinced (heh) that it's the best way forward. As someone who changed my mind on the more traditional lifestyle largely through argumentation and personal experience, I am living proof that changing hearts and minds is possible on this front. Ultimately if conservatives try to force a return to pre-modern times, not only may we lose technological advances, we also don't even have the living traditional to fall back to anymore.

I won't deny that modern liberalism has a lot of flaws, especially when it comes to the religious context. However, as I've argued, going back seems foolish and not that desirable even if we could. I'll end this with a further quote from the article I quoted above, as I think it ends better than I could:

And here I am: a post-traditionalist, in the sense that, although my heart burns when I enter into the depths of traditional religion, I also see that traditionalism as a movement is ultimately false and bankrupt, it is a hopeless and deceptive rearguard action, a denial of reality and a denial of so much concrete, theoretical, and mystical good that people have created when they have striven as moderns to free themselves from tradition, from what has been merely handed down. As the early Quaker Margaret Fell said, “You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say?”

Indeed — what canst thou say? This is what I want to hear, what I want to discover, both in freedom, and in the deepest love and gratitude for our forebears in the faith. Because above all, I want to do this for the sake of cleaving to Jesus. What is the anchor, what is the center, when criticism turns everything upside down, when a mere formal, outward return to ancient faith is impossible, and where inwardly and existentially conforming myself to that ancient faith is also impossible? Where a thoroughgoing modernity, on the other hand, leaves us lost in a land barren and untrodden and unwatered?

Edit: ended up writing this into a more full Substack post, if anyone is interested.

On a more basic level, there is no such thing as "tradition" in general. Something that is non-traditional now might have been traditional 500 years ago, then non-traditional 1000 years ago, and then traditional 2000 years ago. If you want to retvrn to the traditions of 1000 years ago, but you think 2000 years ago we were just too barbaric and unenlightened, that makes you a progressive to some extent. That's why even though I am a retvrn advocate, I try to clarify that I want to retvrn to 1990s liberalism, not earlier and not later.

I find it helps to think of tradition as a river, rather than something static. Tradition is, inherently, a record of change. To be 'traditional', to be part of a tradition, is to be aware of and shaped by all the river's upstream flow. It is not to be exactly the same as the part of the river that was upstream, and neither is it to recreate the conditions upstream perfectly today.

The 'traditional' view of Tradition is that of a seed which is slowly growing into a tree.

I feel like most RETVRN people don't really want anything more than a liberal republic with a more conservative culture most traditionally religious people in the US don't want anything more than that. The neoreactionaries do but they are small enough to be irrelevant and any attempt to create any non liberal society by them is going to run into the problem of who should be king and what the state church should be. The French monarchists once had a majority in parliament but supporting different dynasties.

I mean, the answer to the question changes as society changes. Because the real question, IMHO, is "What does it take for me to be left alone?" And if they keep winning elections, and keep not being left alone, their feelings towards "liberal republic", whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean in the tyranny they increasingly live under, will sour. If the "liberal republic" fails to protect their kids from harmful ideologies they are against, or even pushes them onto their children, Red Caesar starts looking better. If the "liberal republic" unilaterally imports 100% of the extant population of their town in low trust third worlders and then gives them you tax dollars, without anyone ever voting for it, in fact voting against it as often as they can, Red Caesar? I could go on.

Sure, a lot of people might stubbornly stick to worshiping the "liberal republic" they were brought up in, even as it tyrannizes them and has long since stopped being liberal or a republic. Others will cry out for succor, and they won't be picky about the direction it comes from.

When I said liberal republic I didn't mean a republic based on the Democratic party. Just some kind of open democracy. So far all "Red Caesar" candidates in the West have been elected and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

I agree and I think this is my point. The average person wants this, but instead of trying to ask the questions which need to be answered to achieve a truly stable liberal culture with a traditionalist bent, they are focused on fear mongering and such.

In general I think we’re aligned, I suppose this is more of a critique of the popular traditionalist intellectual than it is the movement as a whole. Im extremely sympathetic myself.

Yeah I agree with that. I wish more right wing people wrote more theory the way the leftwing does. Progressives try all sorts of hairbrained schemes but so many conservatives just complain without trying to make a positive structure. Well it's better than it was but still not great.

I was tickled pink to find that the Motte just went through it's fourth birthday, apparently,

Nitpick: third birthday, if you're referring to this site. We launched in September 2022. And the original Reddit forum was many years before that.

The traditionalist response (reaction, more properly) is simply to deny that modernity ever happened, to summon us back to a world where we believe “what the church teaches” (whatever church the given traditionalist may have decided to adhere to), where we simply accept late ancient (or medieval) metaphysics and morals and social structures, where we simply pretend that we can exist as a beseiged outpost of this kind of religious revanchism, a faithful remnant, and make a little world for ourselves.

I think this is a very shallow definition of what is going on. In fact at least since Rousseau it was modernists of various stripes who were preaching about the RETVRN - Rousseau was preaching how we should channel our prehistoric inner noble savage but in "modern world". Libertarians are basing their arguments on how tribal way of property is supposed to work absent government, looking with fondness at medieval Iceland or some such. Marx was calling for return of values of Primitive Communism, where humans lived as true social beings. Nationalists and romantics were literally romanticizing the past looking with fondness at era of medieval chivalry and heroism or maybe Roman republic.

This argument of yours reminds me of a discussion with my mother about Progressivism with her circular logic - progressivism is about progress and progress is what progressives achieve. If so called progressives fuck something up - like for instance tankies - then it was not a progress and thus by definition they were not progressives. Something like how modern progressives hate Woodrow Wilson for his racism and eugenics - despite the fact that he was a prominent progressive of the time. So since eugenics was fucked up, we can throw it into the trash and RETVRN to pre-eugenics era - it was not a true progress anyways. You do the same with conservatives - conservatives can only conserve or regress, otherwise they are not true conservatives. Who knows, maybe even Amish are no true conservatives, as even they improve on their baking or construction methods. Which is BTW exactly the gist of your next argument:

Ultimately if conservatives try to force a return to pre-modern times, not only may we lose technological advances, we also don't even have the living traditional to fall back to anymore.

This is argument from technology and false dichotomy. First, "conservatives" were on the forefront of technological advances for centuries. But this is also besides the point, the argument is stupid on its face - if you want to have modern technology such as tablets and videogames - then somehow it is inevitable to let your child chop his dick off, or at least let him coom on furry sex online, because that is progress and liberty and modernity and it is the basis of our technology? It does not make sense - you can have all the vaccines and airplanes and railroads, and you can land people on the moon even in highly religious societies. How do I know it? Because it already happened historically.

I don't think free access to furry porn is the basis of technology. But will a society that limits their sons' access to the newest technology (and especially if it requires either a blanket ban or the parents' active involvement) reach the heights that are equivalent of going to the moon?

If you did not notice, we already went to the moon in an era where sodomy was a criminal offense, porn was almost nonexistent. Again, this is false choice - you can have technologically advanced society without "freedoms".

In fact, we live in such a society right now. Progressive puritans are the ones who promote their religious ideas such as original sin also known as a privilege based on your race, sex or sexual orientation. We have blasphemy laws with their very own taboo words that cannot be spoken - such as a faggot or nigger or tranny and many more. They have their own structure of sins in their broad istophobic categories such as racist, sexist, homophobe and transphobe around which they have requirements for everybody. Is this not a threat to technological advancement, or is it just a protection of progress, liberty and modernity - or is it a RETVRN to religous dogma in a new skin?

I am not talking about freedoms as a broad social system of things being acceptable or not. I'm talking about parents denying their kids access to smartphones or Internet as one of the measures for upholding lacks of freedoms. In order to assuredly safeguard your kid from porn today, to my knowledge, you have to not buy him a smartphone, not connect his computer to the Internet, keep him away from friends who could provide him with theirs and prevent him from saving up enough of his own money through allowance/summer jobs. I do not believe that's how you raise an above-average innovator today. In the past helicopter parenting was merely stifling; now you'd have to go half-Amish to achieve the same result. And Amishes do not launch rockets.

Sure, let's move it from individual action - although even there I can have many arguments, such as that tech execs and innovators actually do not give smarthpones to their children and send them to schools that ban the technology and stick to older methods of education. But that is besides the point.

What if a conservative government just nuked OnlyFans and Pornhub and other similar websites from orbit tomorrow, similarly to how government recently acted against disinformation channels that they deemed as dangerous - such as Russia Today or what they did to TikTok citing nebulous national security reasons. In your eyes would it mean it represents a dangerous RETVRN ideology, a threat to progress and liberty and modernity and technology and all that, meaning we are now on a slippery slope toward energy blackouts and airplanes falling from the sky?

You could argue that the rich, smart and highly-engaged parents' children are really the only ones who are needed for progress, while the rest can either brainrot themselves or live in digital hothouse conditions until independence, yes. How many schools are there that can prepare children for a life amidst technology while banning it within their walls?

If government simply nuked OnlyFans and Pornhub, then no, I wouldn't say it is damning to progress. On the other hand, if they started cracking down on VPNs, proxies, mirrors, torrents and all other less-easy ways to access wrongthink/wrongfun, that seems like it would negatively affect flourishing, through sheer friction introduced to the infoscape. Not to mention political resentment. I hear the recent riots in Nepal correlated with a crackdown on social media.

If government simply nuked OnlyFans and Pornhub, then no, I wouldn't say it is damning to progress. On the other hand, if they started cracking down on VPNs, proxies, mirrors, torrents and all other less-easy ways to access wrongthink/wrongfun, that seems like it would negatively affect flourishing, through sheer friction introduced to the infoscape. Not to mention political resentment. I hear the recent riots in Nepal correlated with a crackdown on social media.

I don't think so. There is illegal porn content already, which is heavily prosecuted and punished by the government absent bans on VPNs or torrents. We can just expand that no problem. But for me this was just an example and a thought exercise for the test of logic. It definitely is possible to have RETVRN to some semblance of normalcy without sacrificing technology to some magic of absence of abstract liberty to coom.

The government enjoys massive political will among all strata of society to prosecute CP with great prejudice, just a bit less than actual child molestation. I think expanding that to arbitrary definitions of coomery will be a bit harder than "no problem".

This relates to the culture war for the simply fact that I think just like the religious piece, most conservatives that ostensibly want to tear down the liberal establishment, actually don't want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy. It's all well and good to make arguments about tradition and the importance of paternal authority etc in the abstract, but personally submitting yourself to someone else's rule (in a very direct way, I understand that we are ruled indirectly now anyway) would, I suspect, be a bridge too far.

No conservative I've ever met has said he wants to tear down liberal institutions. But individual liberty doesn't perform very well when it comes to producing and sustaining constructive, civilizational habits. It has little to provide when it comes to guiding the broader optimality of society and optimizes solely for individual preference. Most of the western legal system over the course of centuries has been nothing short of codified tradition (which is exactly what 'law' is and is inherently what established tradition is). And no one person's personal experience will overturn the collective experience and collected wisdom of the millions among the generations that came before them. To quote a halfway intellectual idol of mine:

Man is instinctively conservative in the sense that probably millions of years of experience have taught him that a stable environment is the best for peace of mind, present and future security, automatism of action, and a ready command of material and artificial circumstances. It is the repeated introduction of new instruments, new weapons, new methods, and needs for fresh adaptations, that makes automatism impossible. And it is the complication of life by novel contributions to life's interests and duties that makes a ready command of circumstances difficult.

To this thesis I have never seen what I regard as an adequate refutation or substantial challenge to conservatism, defined as such.

In addition though, I simply think that modern liberty is good. I'm a sort of reluctant conservative I'll admit, but even in the traditional conservative picture of the world, I think that personal freedoms from the state and even to a certain extent within traditional communities are great. To me, the project of the conservative in the modern world is not to sort of force us via governmental apparatus back into some halycon pre-modernity days. Instead, the conservative impulse should be focused towards explaining and convincing people in a deep and genuine way that living in a more traditional way is better for society, and better for people in particular.

I enjoy my liberty too, but it's a constrained liberty that exists within a very specific and particular context that's defined and guided by our traditions. I would in no way enjoy the unconstrained, every man for himself liberty that a local Somali warlord would have enjoyed decades ago. And most people generally overstate their love for freedom and liberty. If freedom entails responsibility, most people don't want to have 'anything' to do with it. Conservatism has never rejected the importance of liberty. It just doesn't regard it as the highest value and neither do I.

But individual liberty doesn't perform very well when it comes to producing and sustaining constructive, civilizational habits. It has little to provide when it comes to guiding the broader optimality of society and optimizes solely for individual preference.

Individual liberty, as implemented by the United States, has been a lot more successful than any other system. There are others which have lasted longer (though I note the US system, battered and beaten as it is, still exists), but long periods of stagnation under the Malthusian condition with most people in grinding poverty isn't really something to strive for.

Modern collectivism of the sort that tends to make complaints like liberty "optimizes solely for individual preference" has the worst record of all -- the many skulls piled up by fascist and Communist regimes.

I don't know what barometer you're using to call the US a success in detail so I can't effectively comment on it. And unless you think the US in 2025 is the only example of a successful society out there such that it merits setting it categorically apart from other nations, there are plenty of other successful societies out there. China has a more effective governance system (it's why even scholars of the right-wing like Paul Gottfried have taken to admire it and refers to himself as a "right-wing Leninist"). Japan has a better transportation system. Singapore has a better drug policy. Finland has a better educational system. Many European countries have a better healthcare system. Even North Korea has a better border policy than we do. What’s the superior individual liberty policy prescription for these domains?

A lot of times I see this way of thinking omnipresent in almost every argument left-wingers and progressives alike make in policy circles when it comes to taxing everyone and everything to fund their utopian social programs (and no amount of money will ever be enough to see them achieve their goals). And this is a problem Americans have more generally with the way they look at things; because Americans are a group of people that money will solve anything. I think most people will find it shocking that there are other qualitative aspects to life that are at least equally if not more important to them because believe it or not, money isn't everything.

If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.

Modern collectivism of the sort that tends to make complaints like liberty "optimizes solely for individual preference" has the worst record of all -- the many skulls piled up by fascist and Communist regimes.

I didn't cite communism in my prior example because there's no disagreement I have with the people who make this argument. I'm about as far right-wing on this point as you can get. But there's a reason most civilizations who have flourished over the long run or at best or withstood the test time of time have been ran by highly illiberal regimes, whether democratic or not. I think historians of the future will in a way look back on America with a similar view.

China has a more effective governance system

If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.

Japan has a better transportation system.

If you don't mind tsukin jigoku (commuter hell). I for one do not want to be pressed into commuter paste in order to get to work.

Many European countries have a better healthcare system.

A less expensive one, certainly. But the existence of medical tourism from Europe to the US suggests it's not better on all criteria.

If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?

If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.

Well if I look at the Democracy Perception Index 2020, which measures the public perception of a country's governance. 52% of respondents think France is democratic. 73% think China is democratic. They may not value your personal conception of liberty, but that doesn’t mean they don’t value liberty. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice, Which Rationality?,” so too is the case with your Liberty. Maybe they’re brainwashed fools who don’t understand the true concept of liberty, but I’m doubtful.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?

Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.

Incidentally is immigration something I’m supposed to be impressed with here? Even most Afghans aren’t clamoring to come to the US and of those that are and desperately want to attach themselves to jet turbines and escape, I say let them. People immigrate all the time. So what? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any country the US is actively bombing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that people are trying to escape it. They don’t envy American liberty. They envy American wealth. And unless you can explain to me how the latter is causally explained by the former, I’m not going to buy that argument. I’d argue you care as much about the terminal as well as instrumental values of your liberty, because you don’t place the same value on alternative conceptions of liberty. And the reason for this is because it doesn’t produce outcomes that are agreeable to you.

Also don’t know what your link has to do with my argument.

Democracy Perception Index 2020

Don't. Democracy is not the same as liberty. And a "Democracy Perception Index" that puts China at 73% is obviously garbage, it's like a "Skiing Perception Index" that puts Haiti at #2.

Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.

It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.

I think this is a good place to leave this discussion. If liberty is an idea so sacrosanct that it can’t be discussed in a meaningful relationship to the rest of the world in all its friction, I see little utility to it in any sense. Someone can hug the idea to them if they like, but it’s not for me; nor do most people care about it in that way.

If you don’t want to read in greater detail the information I want to present to you and simply dismiss it out of hand, that’s fine. The data itself is about “perceptions,” not how you may feel about the idea in private abstract.

It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.

I didn’t say it’s an assumption that the US is the most wealthy country in the world. I said the assumption lies with thinking that that’s an important barometer for gauging liberty. Which I reject. 10 fish in a bucket is quantitatively the same thing as 1 fish in 10 buckets. The latter is a ‘wealthier’ society measured by its health as a whole, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Conservatism includes a “place” for personal liberty in the lives of ordinary individuals. I completely buy that premise and reject any one of them that postulates the totalitarianism of liberty over anything of equal or greater importance.

Man is instinctively conservative in the sense that probably millions of years of experience have taught him that a stable environment is the best for peace of mind, present and future security, automatism of action, and a ready command of material and artificial circumstances. It is the repeated introduction of new instruments, new weapons, new methods, and needs for fresh adaptations, that makes automatism impossible. And it is the complication of life by novel contributions to life's interests and duties that makes a ready command of circumstances difficult.

The shortened version of this argument is that tradition is an experiment which has worked.

I'd agree that for better or worse the 'capital T' Traditional world is dying. I think an important factor that's often overlooked is that the ubiquitous preindustrial peasant sustenance economies that dominated almost the entire globe 200 years ago are gone entirely or radically diminished today in Europe, America, East Asia and increasingly the developing world as well. Most old religious and cultural traditions were made by and for people who lived in in societies that were arranged very differently from ours, and these traditions served the needs and aspirations of the people who lived in these types of societies.

Obviously there are differences; Rome isn't Babylon, which isn't the kingdom of Mercia, which isn't the Delhi Sultanate etc. However, there are some very broad comonalities in premodern agricultural societies that dont apply to today. We aren't as subject to the seasons or time of day for our livelihoods anymore. Our lives arent determined by the will of a military aristocracy. Corvee labor isnt really a thing. I feel that if the spirit of our traditions is to continue into the future, it will need to confront and interact with the world we have, not the one our ancestors did.

For a tradition to survive it needs to retain its core foundational ideas, while simultaneously adapting its teachings and doctrine to the industrial world and really decide what they want to integrate vs discard. Are vtubers haram? Maybe. Is launching a nuclear war moral in X or Y circumstance? Maybe not. But I think that having these sorts of ready made answers would be a massive boon for most religions, even if the rulings are arbitrary or rely on esoteric theology.

I'd agree that for better or worse the 'capital T' Traditional world is dying. I think an important factor that's often overlooked is that the ubiquitous preindustrial peasant sustenance economies that dominated almost the entire globe 200 years ago are gone entirely or radically diminished today in Europe, America, East Asia and increasingly the developing world as well.

This. How would modern "trad" society look like? How would modern industrial infrastructure, both hard and soft, run on traditional feudal principles? I am not aware of any trad engaging with this question at all.

How would modern industrial infrastructure, both hard and soft, run on traditional feudal principles?

I'd say, start with looking at the UAE and at Imperial Japan — the latter in particular shows combining rapid industrialization with predominantly feudal social structures. (I'll also remind people that the majority of marriages in Japan were arranged — either by families or through the traditional omiai matchmaking system — all the way until the late 1960s. I also recall at least one author comparing the lifetime employment, and loyalty to the company, of the 1980s Japanese salaryman to the feudal fealty of their ancestors a century or so prior.)

Now, I know people will argue that the UAE only works because of oil — I've encountered proponents of strict "deterministic" correlations of political forms and technological abilities who've baldly asserted that "the moment the oil runs out" every single modern building in Dubai will literally crumble into dust and the population will be "back to riding camels and living in 1800s conditions the very next day."

As for the criticisms I get on Japan as model, I must once again note that there is a huge difference between "you can't mix feudal social norms with industrial technology because social and technological determinism make them fundamentally incompatible and doom the attempt to collapse from the internal contradictions" and "you can't mix feudal social norms with industrial technology because the US will bomb you into submission if you try."

(Also, I might add that you're just not reading the right sci-fi.)

Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary both went through phases of industrializing without that much added social liberalism; of course they lost a war so we can’t see how the experiment would’ve turned out.

It's worth noting Dubai isn't that dependent on oil and has successfully diversified according to Wikipedia only 5% of Dubai's revenue comes from oil.

True, but the GDP Abu Dhabi, which makes up more of the UAE's economy than Dubai, is still predominantly based on oil exports. Whether Dubai's wealth is sustainable or not without Abu Dhabi's economic engine is still in question.

I'd agree that for better or worse the 'capital T' Traditional world is dying. I think an important factor that's often overlooked is that the ubiquitous preindustrial peasant sustenance economies that dominated almost the entire globe 200 years ago are gone entirely or radically diminished today in Europe, America, East Asia and increasingly the developing world as well. Most old religious and cultural traditions were made by and for people who lived in in societies that were arranged very differently from ours, and these traditions served the needs and aspirations of the people who lived in these types of societies.

Extremely good points! Yeah even the metaphors and language in the Bible is very focused on those types of cultures. Having to answer all these complex questions certainly seems to have overwhelmed church hierarchies.

The rapid pace of technological advancement also seems quite difficult to keep up with when trying to promote a careful solution that fits with centuries of dogma and other teachings.

I have no idea what lends credence to his argument. The exact opposite has been shown to be true since the end of the 20th century. Fukuyama's 'End of History' thesis was laudably ambitious but most societies that were wrapped up in his prediction went the other direction by almost 180 degrees. They greatly retain and drew their ideas for economic and technological development from their historical traditions. Japanese manufacturing for instance did that with Zen Buddhism in the 20th century at the same time people were declaring the triumph over tradition. Technology has hardly supplanted tradition and I think it's unlikely it will in the near future either.

I’d like to break the “retvrn question” down along two axes. One is the criteria of evaluation: truth, helpfulness, and social attainability. The other is the spectrum of ideologies under discussion: groups who agree on critiques of liberal modernity have very different ideas of the right path forward.

Truth

The criterion of truth is the most important, and it’s the only one to apply to questions of metaphysics and religious doctrine. You, I, and society should seek to believe true things. Is willingness to buck the social consensus here liberal? Not necessarily. First-century Jewish Christians stood against the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Sanhedrin; first-century gentile Christians contrasted even more starkly with the pagan social order.

This does contradict some critics of liberalism: neoreactionaries and some rightward-inclined rationalists want to talk about religion in utilitarian terms. But they are wrong to do so. We have a duty to the truth; even if we didn’t, the cost of ignoring it is beating one’s head fruitlessly against the brick wall of reality.

Helpfulness

Helpfulness is, if not more controversial, then definitely less objective. There are always tradeoffs to be made. And the variety of liberalism’s critics becomes obvious here. You may be thinking about neoreactionaries or integralists. But I, as someone who loves American classical liberalism, share concerns with these other critics.

One is that increased social and religious diversity has exposed cracks in liberal principles that were safely papered over in a more coherent society. Much discourse and litigation over religious liberty since the middle of the twentieth century is a fight between three groups of people: people who want to pass laws and to expect those laws to be followed, people who expect freedom of religion to keep the government from making their religious duties illegal, and people who expect freedom from religion to exclude religious considerations from the regulated sphere of life.

Another is that the synthesis of progressivism and liberalism seeks state intervention to free individuals from the influences of their families, churches, and other societies of private life. No-fault divorce is now ubiquitous. Governments forbid male-only fraternal organizations. Some state universities de facto ban religious student groups by requiring them to admit as members or officers those who don’t share their convictions. After a while one begins to think that liberalism as it exists will not leave well enough alone; and if the state is to intervene, I want it intervening to support my idea of the good and not to ban it.

I think there are more people in this camp than there are neoreactionaries and integralists. We thought parts of liberalism were pretty swell, but they haven’t worked out as promised. Was that contingent on the winds of politics? Or could liberalism only support a healthy society so long as there was enough of Christendom left as a foundation? It’s difficult to say.

Social Attainability

I really don’t know what is attainable, particularly in the long run. I don’t think we Americans in 2006 could predict where the country would be in 2015, less than a decade later. Heck, I don’t think that in January 2016 we could predict where we would be in November 2016. Much is in flux.

You are right that we won’t see a return to medieval Christendom. But that’s not the only alternative to liberalism. And I worry that we’ve lost healthy classical liberalism anyway, that that option is no longer attainable.

Another is that the synthesis of progressivism and liberalism seeks state intervention to free individuals from the influences of their families, churches, and other societies of private life. No-fault divorce is now ubiquitous. Governments forbid male-only fraternal organizations. Some state universities de facto ban religious student groups by requiring them to admit as members or officers those who don’t share their convictions. After a while one begins to think that liberalism as it exists will not leave well enough alone; and if the state is to intervene, I want it intervening to support my idea of the good and not to ban it.

This is a great response, and does change my mind a bit! You're right that the state has been wielded directly against local communities, families, parishes, etc. Makes it a bit more complicated.

Where do you think we might end up?

I don't know. Absent a revival, which is an act of God, I think by far the most likely outcome continues to be decadence as a state-enforced right.

Government policies that respect the natural law and seek to make obedience to it easier push back against this, and they have the potential to create a literally virtuous cycle between law and custom. They also facilitate human flourishing, which is no small thing. The state can't solve the problem, but it can do better than it has done. I am not optimistic about achieving this as a political matter, but I've been surprised before.

Government policies that respect the natural law and seek to make obedience to it easier push back against this, and they have the potential to create a literally virtuous cycle between law and custom. They also facilitate human flourishing, which is no small thing.

What does this look like? Be specific, and where possible, please point towards historical examples of these policies.

I’ve been thinking about the best way to answer. To be specific and even gesture at the scope of the issue would take an effortpost that I don’t have in me right now. But I can give a few examples:

  • Ban abortion and assisted suicide.
  • Reverse government recognition of gay marriage. The reason this one comes so early is that gay marriage makes a bunch of the other changes to family policy harder.
  • Require a demonstration of (considerable) fault to obtain a divorce.
    • Take fault into account when deciding what responsibilities the spouses have to one another in the distribution of property, etc.
    • Acknowledge that people will abuse this if they can get away with it, and so treat perjury in divorce proceedings seriously.

I have ideas at various stages of development about how the state can make male-breadwinner, female-homemaker families a realistic option for more of those who want them; better respect parents’ rights and duties in raising their children; defend those who speak the truth on culture issues; protect the right of self-defense; and acknowledge the independence of churches. I am sure this is not an exhaustive list, but it’s what comes to the tips of my fingers for now.

If by Natural law you mean law derived from natural principles (i.e the Natural world), that does not necessarily imply abortion bans. Natural abortifacients exist, and animals kill their off-spring all the time. Many animals also engage in homosexual behavior. Why does Natural law then support your beliefs? Or is Natural law merely the name for your preferred moral sensibilities, in which case its arbitrary?

This dovetails into another topic that I, like you, don't have it in me to effortpost about right now, which is: how do you guarantee that your reforms don't change, and revert back to standard liberalism? Many of your proscriptions/desires/policies, resemble those of 1950s America, and we know for a fact that those changed to align with progressive mores. Does not the fact that we did have "Government policies that respect the natural law", and those policies were changed, evidence contradicting your claim that "Government policies that respect the natural law ... have the potential to create a literally virtuous cycle between law and custom"? That is empirical evidence that, no, conservative laws are not naturally resistant to progressive agitation, and in fact, seem very vulnerable to them; hell, conservative customs aren't very resistant to liberalization. So how can you be sure you won't just repeat the cycle all over again?

Natural law is the moral order inherent in the order of creation, particularly human nature, as distinct from social custom or positive law such as statutes. In the ancient world it could be discussed by Christians, pagans, and de facto atheists, but in 21st-century America it is mostly a Christian idea.

… how do you guarantee that your reforms don't change, and revert back to standard liberalism?

This is an open question, and a vital one. I have some thoughts but not a satisfactory answer. Realistically, many of these policies couldn’t happen unless there were social change underway already, and I am not optimistic about that change happening absent a black swan event like another Great Awakening. I don’t want to pretend that wise social policy can fix things by itself.

Many of your proscriptions/desires/policies, resemble those of 1950s America, and we know for a fact that those changed to align with progressive mores.

True. I’d argue that the 1950s were kind of unstable to begin with, that the social legacies of the 1920s and of the New Deal had yet to be worked out.

Experience now gives the lie to some naïve past arguments for liberalization in a way that would make them harder to repeat. In the push for no-fault divorce, people argued (seriously!) that it wouldn’t increase divorce rates. Afterward, social psychologists said that divorce would be good for children. Those are arguments you can’t make with a straight face in 2025. If you wanted to restore no-fault divorce after a change in the status quo, you’d have to argue that no-fault divorce is worth the costs, not that there are no costs.

That is empirical evidence that, no, conservative laws are not naturally resistant to progressive agitation, and in fact, seem very vulnerable to them; hell, conservative customs aren't very resistant to liberalization. So how can you be sure you won't just repeat the cycle all over again?

I can’t be sure.

Western societies were Christian before they were liberal, and liberalism benefited from the customs and ideas laid down under centuries of Christendom. One of the outstanding questions on the modern Christian right is whether classical liberalism necessarily erodes that foundation: Did it have to be that way, or was that just how it worked out? I don’t know.

I think that laws that make it easier to have healthy families and churches and so on will lead to more of them, and that having more of them will feed back into policy. That’s the virtuous cycle I mentioned. I can’t promise that it won’t be outweighed by other factors, but I still think it represents movement in the right direction. It’s just not a silver bullet.

Government policies that respect the natural law and seek to make obedience to it easier push back against this, and they have the potential to create a literally virtuous cycle between law and custom. They also facilitate human flourishing, which is no small thing. The state can't solve the problem, but it can do better than it has done. I am not optimistic about achieving this as a political matter, but I've been surprised before.

You're not going to inspire a country like the US with 300M+ people to return to good sense where it concerns our shortcomings and failures. That's about right up there with thinking you can solve problems like prostitution through moral lectures. You can't. The State may not be able to completely solve that problem on it's own, but it's all but impossible to solve without it. You need the political mechanisms, coercion and sometimes even the looming threat of intimidation to get people to act and behave right. For me the only reason to be optimistic is where there's a political will for the government to lay down it's iron hand on a number of important issues.

I don't think the tension between living in a liberal society and holding liberal values (classically defined) while living conservative lives is quite as large a gap as is often suggested. Most religious denominations are quite comfortable with liberal values – for example today the Catholic Church's official position is that religious freedom is good, and I think most religious people (in the USA) are quite comfortable with liberalism as classically defined.

Liberalism, it seems to me, is a problem for a small subset of intellectuals who say "if the rule that you followed led to this, of what use was the rule?" I wouldn't necessarily say this is a bad question to ask, but I think a lot of times it results (or stems from) a sort of terminal thinking, the idea that because a democracy led to bad things, it will lead to more bad things in the future. But of course it's quite possible that (classical) liberalism will snap back – the Americans of the 1760s were liberals, it's entirely possible for classical liberalism to accommodate extremely conservative sentiments.

My point here isn't that I think RETVRN TO THE 1790s is going to happen at the voter box, exactly. But societies evolve in unpredictable ways. And because we know that classical liberalism worked quite effectively (arguably much more effectively) with conservative social mores in the past, if liberal social mores are unsustainable – as they now in many ways seem to be – it's quite reasonable to be optimistic about conservative social mores within the framework of classical liberalism in the future. That's not a RETVRN in my mind – the only way out is through. Likely we will not see a return to 1790. We shouldn't want to! What we should want is a 2040 that is better than a 2024, better even than a 1790. And if conservative social mores are good, then although they might be to some degree different in the age of AI and automobiles, building a better future means building one with conservative social mores.

Perhaps I'm missing your point here – feel free to correct me if so!

My point here isn't that I think RETVRN TO THE 1790s is going to happen at the voter box, exactly.

It is not going to happen at gun point either.

Look at most serious attempt (so far) of RETVRN of (partly) modernized society back to trad life.

Yes, I mean Iran.

It is total failure on all terms, and especially trad religious ones. And it was not due to ayatollah's softness, due to excessive devotion to "human rights" or "due process". I am not aware of any "trad" engaging with this example, honestly trying to find out "what went wrong" or "who betrayed the revolution".

Good point with Iran. I actually think Ireland is also an interesting example. And unlike Iran, the revolution in Ireland was bottom-up, but Ireland was then quickly hollowed out by secularism just the same as England (despite the role religious tensions played in their departure!)

Nobody betrayed it the elite keep trucking trying to keep people trad and traditional even as society slips further and further from their grasp particularly in the cities. They all the political power but lack the cultural cache to keep the populace in line with their values and have had to basically abandon the democracy with trad guardrails Khomeini created because the vote is just going to go to the most liberal candidate.

A study would be interesting as the Gulf despite also having a conservative government had a population that remains conservative despite wealth and constant contact with more liberal foreigners. I suspect deep reasons of culture and status and maybe because they never had that liberal core. Once you do it seems it's pretty hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The Europeans tried for a hundred years after the French revolution and never managed it.

The Gulf's government (monarchy) is not conservative. It is an open secret that the Gulf monarchies drink alcohol, and fuck prostitutes. The reason that the Gulf populace is conservative, is because social conservatism is part of their founding national myth; khaleejis (gulf Arabs) literally define themselves as the originators of, protectors of, and most devout followers of Islam.

Islam is incredible intertwined with how Gulf Arabs see themselves, and is the reason for the population's continued conservative. Although, I do have to note that even that is changing. In 2022, Saudi Arabia formally cutoff its association with the Islamic clergy. The population is quickly becoming westernized.

My point here isn't that I think RETVRN TO THE 1790s is going to happen at the voter box, exactly. But societies evolve in unpredictable ways. And because we know that classical liberalism worked quite effectively (arguably much more effectively) with conservative social mores in the past, if liberal social mores are unsustainable – as they now in many ways seem to be – it's quite reasonable to be optimistic about conservative social mores within the framework of classical liberalism in the future. That's not a RETVRN in my mind – the only way out is through. Likely we will not see a return to 1790. We shouldn't want to! What we should want is a 2040 that is better than a 2024, better even than a 1790. And if conservative social mores are good, then although they might be to some degree different in the age of AI and automobiles, building a better future means building one with conservative social mores.

I very strongly agree with this... I don't think you are missing my point I think we see eye to eye on a lot of these topics.

I suppose what I don't like is a boneheaded and sort of violent approach towards forcing traditionalism back, as opposed to as you say working through democracy or being more reasonable and optimistic about our current society. So again, I think we're on the same page.

And that boneheaded approach will likely fail without buy in from the people. Multiple European monarchies tried throughout the 1800s and weren't able to manage it.

Right, you can debate all day long whether or not it's morally justified to RETVRN by force of arms but it's sort of pointless to discuss the theory when the practice does poorly.

I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to freeze a society as a given technological level. The Amish have done it. I think some Buddhist groups in Asia do it. Vows of poverty by monks in Catholicism sort of have a similar effect.

If any people in a particular time period feel like they are at an optimal balance of culture and technology, they could run a tech freeze. As long as they can shelter in a larger culture that will prevent invasions.

The fact that it happens so rarely leads me to believe that everyone has some nostalgia glasses on and believe they just missed the golden ages that were their childhood. Rarely is anyone satisfied with the current culture enough to attempt to lock it in place and preserve it. Or they are some combination of optimistic about the future and powerless in the present.

Monks use the cell phones, automobiles, internet, etc as called for in their work. Monastic cloisters are at least partially wired for electricity, have normal plumbing, etc.

A vow of poverty does not mean ‘can’t use technology’, it means ‘can’t personally own things’.

Ownership is a form of social technology. An old one for sure.

But I guess that means I could consider communist nations attempts at controlling technology levels at a national level. They failed due to outside competition and a breakdown in the fact that the social technology they tried to get rid of was a load bearing part of modern society.

I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to freeze a society as a given technological level.

You're in one right now, and you don't notice it because it's imposed by a loosely co-ordinated compact in each of the most technologically-advanced nations.
The massively capital-intensive nature of manufacturing the highest technologies doesn't help either, of course, nor did our outsourcing of low-cost manufacturing to another nation help that either.

This is one of the things the modern regulatory/bureaucratic state actively exists to do, as it's in its interest not to let technology develop that would make it more difficult to govern. Companies also co-ordinate to do this, particularly technology ones (this is the main reason hardware and software manufacturers intentionally frustrate attempts to run arbitrary code on their systems).

Modern reform governments, like the one in the US right now, tend to degrade the bureaucracy's ability to do this as its first order of business. Progressive-conservatives would rather make sure the seals aren't emotionally affected by your rocket launches.

Slowing is one thing stopping is something different.

After all, if we have achieved at some a perfect or 'good enough' mix of physical and social technology, than getting further away from that point is bad. Driving fast or slow off a cliff doesn't make too much difference.

most conservatives that ostensibly want to tear down the liberal establishment, actually don't want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy.

How far back turning the dial of time does returning to tradition mean? It's like a tradeoff between higher relative status for White males and lower standards of living, vs less status and the fruits of modernity. I think for the former category, there was more freedom compared to today. But also, I think people have a conception or idealization of a past that didn't really exist, when in reality things were pretty disorderly back then. If you read the biographies of artists and writers who grew up in the mid to early 20th century, when America was assumed to be more conservative and religious, a theme is how they were constantly breaking the law and given second chances. it's like these ppl were in and out of detention and skipping school and smoking and drinking in their early teens, and no one cared that much. Nowadays, things are much more strict.

If you read the biographies of artists and writers who grew up in the mid to early 20th century, when America was assumed to be more conservative and religious, a theme is how they were constantly breaking the law and given second chances. it's like these ppl were in and out of detention and skipping school and smoking and drinking in their early teens, and no one cared that much.

I think that was viable in large part because of the lower rate of serious criminality. (Particularly in white neighborhoods before desegregation.) If crime is less of a problem, if fewer people are escalating from minor offenses to murder, then you don't need to be as harsh to keep it down. It's like a thermostat, if the furnace is running more (harsher policing and sentencing), the insulation is better (older population), and yet the temperature inside (murder rate) is the same or colder then it's probably colder outside. An alternative explanation would be that the furnace doesn't work, but based on stuff like the success of 90s tough-on-crime efforts and the surge from the Ferguson/Floyd Effect it seems like policing has the expected effect, it just has more to handle. Similarly in other countries harsher policing seems effective but the countries that need to resort to it are the ones that had crime problems to begin with. Of course none of this means that "less religiosity" or the like is one of the reasons why, I just think the tradeoffs here are underappreciated. There's a tendency for people to either believe harsh policing and sentencing is intrinsically good/free (Why should we worry about the welfare of criminal scum?), or to believe that it's evil/useless (Don't you know Sweden has 18% of the U.S. incarceration rate and yet it has only 20% of the U.S. murder rate? Why can't we just use their system?). I think the better way to think about it is that it's a necessary but serious cost and the preferable situation is to avoid paying it by having less criminality to begin with.

"a theme is how they were constantly breaking the law and given second chances..."

Yep, all kinds of casual rule-breaking and callous behavior in the past. My dad stole cars (to this day he says "I just borrowed them (because he did in fact return them)" and went to juvenile hall but still went on to have multiple marriages, kids, long career. Dealt with alcoholism, saved by his marriage. At one point one of our cats had an unexpected litter and I shit you not he just put them in a bag and dropped them in a well. My mom was furious. (In pop culture, the first season of Mad Men depicting Draper's family littering after a picnic was also quite accurate.)

Hard to see all that happening today for a man and it still turns out ok. For one, women aren't as interested in rescuing you from yourself, as my mother did for him. You need your shit together early and on your own.

In a world where 16 year olds from time to time boost cars then leave them on the side of the road 30 feet from where they stole them, and then grow into productive citizens, this is how the criminal justice system should work.

In the world of the county I currently reside, this is instead the progression: 12-16 year olds regularly boost cars for their gangs. The gangs turn them into parts and they disappear into the black market and no owner ever sees them again. Then somewhere in the 16-21 year old age range they graduate to armed robbery and hijacking. Sometimes someone is shot, sometimes luckily not. If no one dies and they are 16 or 17, they get out in 3 years! If 18-21, 20 years. If they are the juvie, well they prolly do it again, or something else dumb like dealing drugs while armed. Then they get hit with a good 7-10. Now both sets of these juvies are lucky, they did no murders in their 20s, so they are likely about to age out of the violent crime demo. They are resigned to a life (mostly) of drug dealing, retail (or amazon delivery) thieving, and other antisocial, but usually nonviolent activities at this point. In any case the system that applied above makes no sense for the scenario here, and I gave a rosy scenario. No one has actually been shot or killed, merely placed in the extreme danger of being shot or killed.

The problem isn't that rehabilitation doesn't work as an absolute measure. Its that the places it would work are often the places where it is so rarely needed, no one even thinks about implementing it.

Wow this is a beautiful story, in some ways at least. I do agree our culture seems far more strict and less forgiving than it used to be.

Somewhere, someone that used to post here has a lovely little blog post about the gracelessness of "computer says no" type systems. Forgiveness, grace, is the product of trust and common culture. Or divinity.

Leaving that last option aside, our culture no longer has that kind of trust and common culture, the strong ties and little platoons that made that kind of forgiveness and tolerance possible.

less forgiving than it used to be

I think Decarlos Brown Jr. is a pretty good example of the problem with being too forgiving.

Weirdly we seem more forgiving in a legal context and less forgiving in a social context.

Unfortunately, I think your is doing a lot of projecting.

When he (he?) says;

It’s a lie. We don’t believe it. I certainly don’t, and I don’t think anyone else really does either.

I think he's giving up the game a little bit. Simply saying, "C'mon, Man! You can't be serious" is a great way to get YesChad.jpeg'ed (I love that I keep getting to use that).

We are all still moderns. Our instincts are modern. Our instincts are, by any reasonable description, liberal.

Well, No.

Our instincts are base and crude. We all want the basics; sex, salt (broadly;food), and shelter. Any human who lives in a group larger than a 40 person extended family is also going to have a general interest in social esteem. Satisfying only these base instincts is actually the enemy of both the traditionalists and liberals.

For traditionalists, it's direct and obvious. The more you seek after yourself, the more egotistical you become, the more you reject God's laws to subdue your base impulses and live a life of virtue. Even the proto-monotheism of the Platonic philosophers pretty much agrees with this. Easy.

For liberals, it's a little harder. They want you to be able to enjoy your basic urges to an extent and with the precondition of some sort of consent; personal in the sexual realm, and societal in the everything else realm. Eat as much as you want! But, oh, wouldn't it be good if we were all healthy too? You can make a ton of money and be a famous rich guy! But, oh, shouldn't some of what you make go to the less fortunate? You can have sex with anyone you want! Who consents ... now and forever after. And, oh, maybe don't be a sex pest even though that kind of lines up with sexually libertine attitudes. I guess what I'm saying is be attractive and charming if you want to have sex - and then you can have as much as you want. Until we (who?) decide you can't.

You can tell which side I'm on, but I think it's a fair claim to say that liberals believe in liberalism until trade-offs enter the frame. Then, they sidestep the need for individual sacrifice for the sake of social stability, let alone metaphysical virtue. So we get this weird kind of social communism - do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, where "hurt" is never clearly defined and can change subjectively. This is how liberalism ultimately leads to progressivism. Too many people start to do what they want, and society suffers. Now, there's an need to "Do somEthinG!" Cue whatever moral panic is in vogue at the moment.

A lot of this goes back to the sleight of hand that took place during the enlightenment. Enlightenment thinking was first about science and the scientific method (note: not "the science"). The trick was that political and philosophical thinkers bamboozled folks into believing the same thing could be applied to, well, politics, philosophy, and morality. We could "investigate" our beliefs and through some sort of evidentiary "thinking" determine what was ultimately good or bad. There are still practitioners of this today - dedicated ones. Sam Harris' tedious podcasts are all actually honest attempts to define "good" and "bad" without a single shred of the Divine. It takes six hours and he ends up with the most wishy-washy definition you could imagine; "whatever promotes human flourishing." Wow, six hours to hit one level of recursion.

One of the best arguments for traditionalism is that it confronts categorization error head on. This is what the state does. This is what the church does. This is what the family does. There are some levels of interdependence, sure, but, to the extent that they exist, they're mostly fixed (or, at least, there's some tradition in their definitions). What is "good" and "bad." God told us. We can absolutely puzzle over why He determined they are good and bad but, in the meantime and, actually, for all of time, we should OBEY (to quote a cool hat I saw once).

I'll agree that there is some LARPing. Even worse, there's a lot of admiring the problem while only offering the most sketchy of solutions. Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option isn't much more than "Go to church a lot, only hang out with other people who go to your church, homeschool your kids." It isn't bad advice, but it also isn't some sort of systemic gameplan to RETVRN. There are also, yes, trads of all types who are still living in the matrix. I can remember a conversation with a young woman whom I befriended while temporarily living in DC. She was going through pre-marriage counseling with her local Catholic priest. She was bemoaing the fact that, on a questionnaire she had her fiancee had to fill out, it asked "who will be handling the household finances?" "Tollbooth!" She steamed, "What am I supposed to do? Just stand barefoot in the kitchen all day with a baby on my hip?"

Say it with me; YesChad.jpeg.

This was not a secular woman. This was a woman who went to the Latin Mass regularly, dressed drastically modestly (long skirts and high necklines in August DC heat - props, girl!) and was very interested in having lots of babies with her husband. Or was she? Even an innocuous pre-marriage questionnaire was enough to hit the "THEY'RE TAKING MAH RIGHTS" nerve in her (thoroughly modern?) brain.

On the male side, there are tons of LARPing trad daddies who aren't ready for the reality that when the bible says that a wife must submit to her husband, the context isn't clear -- it may mean that the submission occurs only after DaddyCath has gotten into full guard and worked a triangle choke .... metaphorically, y'all. These are young men in tweed jackets who don't have enough social awareness to STFU when the 60 year old with 35 years of marriage and 7 kids is giving actual marital advice. They are hopeless if they think they can manage a new bride behind closed doors.

So how rad can we trade without living a lie? On a personal or family level, I think it's pretty easy. I live in a weird rural spot now where the downtown of the "town" near me has pride flags everywhere. I drink in those bars often. When my drinking buddies - purple haired and all - find out I'm a young jedi in training novice trad cath, they've all hit me with some version of "So you think a woman doesn't have a right to choose?!" to which I will reply "The laws (depending on state) say she can. In my eyes, it's murder and she'll have a lot to answer for. I'd never advise it" The follow up is usually some version of "well, but like, I mean ... politically, though..."

And that's the slogan I'll conclude with - To be trad, you reject the premise that "the personal is political" (or however it's phrased). I get to act out and live my beliefs the way I want. When the state says I can't do that then, yes, there are issues. That's not (quite) the battle we're fighting today. Unfortunately, however, the front lines are definitely impacting kids. Some of @WhiningCoil's stories are truly terrifying.

She was going through pre-marriage counseling with her local Catholic priest. She was bemoaing the fact that, on a questionnaire she had her fiancee had to fill out, it asked "who will be handling the household finances?" "Tollbooth!" She steamed, "What am I supposed to do? Just stand barefoot in the kitchen all day with a baby on my hip?"

She was over-reacting, but it's not graven in stone that the man handles all the money. Plenty of traditional households had the women doing the budgeting and the man kept an allowance out of his paypacket.

It's a very important question, because if you don't have an agreement on that before you get together, there are all kinds of nasty surprises lying in store. Using the example of a family member of mine, they didn't have a pre-marriage course/church wedding. Husband handled all the finances. Except he didn't, and wife only found out when the tax demands etc. started coming hot and heavy. The kids' college funds had to be used to pay off all the debts and taxes and rent etc. he was supposedly paying, except he wasn't. And she never questioned him or tried finding out for herself how much money was coming in and were the bills being paid, because he used to get very huffy and upset about that. So by doing things like taking the kids' college funds and help from family, they got out of the hole.

And then a few years down the line, he did it again.

That's a marriage that needed someone to go "so who will be handling the finances?" before ever they got hitched, and if there was no agreement about "we'll share all information, there won't be secrecy, if I ask you did the rent get paid I am not nagging and belittling you", then no marriage.

Trad Girl needs to have that talk with her fiancé about "so do I run the household budget, do you, do we both? joint account, separate accounts? savings? names on deeds or other property ownership?" That's not "corruption of her modern mind instead of the traditional values she claims to hold", that's plain horse sense.

EDIT: Also Catholicism, even traditional (I'm not sure about capital T "Traditional") Catholicism isn't the same about headship and the wife must submit to the husband as (Evangelical) Protestantism. There's a more complementarian view where the wife rules in the domestic sphere and has more authority, in some areas, than the husband. So jokes about choke holds and managing new brides don't quite ring true. Managing the husband is more the reality 😁

She was going through pre-marriage counseling with her local Catholic priest. She was bemoaing the fact that, on a questionnaire she had her fiancee had to fill out, it asked "who will be handling the household finances?" "Tollbooth!" She steamed, "What am I supposed to do? Just stand barefoot in the kitchen all day with a baby on my hip?"

My understanding is that the correct answer to this question can be anything, as long as both partners are able to give the same answer without thinking. The point isn't that there is a Church-approved answer, it is that you should have discussed this question (and other, similar questions about how the marriage will work) and reached an agreement before you show up for pre-cana.

She was going through pre-marriage counseling with her local Catholic priest. She was bemoaing the fact that, on a questionnaire she had her fiancee had to fill out, it asked "who will be handling the household finances?" "Tollbooth!" She steamed, "What am I supposed to do? Just stand barefoot in the kitchen all day with a baby on my hip?"

Am I supposed to read something prescriptive in the question? It seems just common sense to ensure a couple has a plan in place on how to handle finances before getting married. Catholics have a systematic marriage prep for this reason - to make sure that the common causes of divorce are at least discussed prior to making a life-long commitment.

Is she assuming the priest was expecting a response of "husband works, I drag toddlers to supermarket?" Because normally they don't care, as long as you have an answer and you've talked about it with your betrothed. Also (at least for me) we didn't have to share the questionnaire with anyone, we just filled it out and talked with each other.

(Also @HereAndGone and @MadMonzer)

That whooshing sound you heard was the point going over your head.

Understand that I used that illustrative anecdote to make the point that this girl, who "talked the talk" of traditionalism, immediately balked upon the first real imperative to walk the walk. Of course a couple should have these conversations about household finances before they get married. And, yes, I am aware that, in the trad view, women were often expected to manage the money that the men made for a whole host of excellent reasons.

The point is that instead of this "trad" woman taking a breath and working with her fiancee and priest to develop a mutually acceptable, yet doctrinally sound, arrangement, she immediately over reacted in a way that betrayed a lot of very modern feminist thinking. This is why I used the "living in the matrix" imagery earlier. I agree that a lot of "trads" are actually just thoroughly modern people who decided to buy the TradCath / Christian Patriarchy / OrthoBro player Skin from the DLC loot box.

So, please attempt to modulate the 'tism a little and realize that I wasn't trying to offer an underdeveloped thesis on marital finances.

No, my comment wasn't really directed towards you but towards the woman, who of course wouldn't read it. You are correct that it's weird for the woman to think she's traditionalist. I'm pointing out that she jumped to a conclusion very quickly, and it's probably the wrong conclusion. A bit of a Freudian slip.

"who will be handling the household finances?"

Trad answer is, of course, the wife. For good reason - traditional societies were heavily alcoholic societies, where if average man got his hands on cash, he would instantly spend it all on booze.

Correct. Trad priests regularly remind young men that of course she wants your money, the woman spends most of the money in the household. She buys the groceries, the kids clothes, pays the bills(as in logs on/calls in and pays them), etc.

Hah I agree having studied history! Traditionally women were masters of the house and household economy. Men would make MAJOR decisions, but by and large the household finances were firmly in the realm of women.

Depends on social class. The wife handles budgeting and accounting of day-to-day expenditure (including business expenditure if the family runs a small business which is too small to hire a clerk). For working and lower-middle class families, day-to-day expenditure is the household finances, so the wife handles it all. For the upper-middle class, it would be normal for the wife to handle day-to-day expenditure and the husband to handle major investments. For the upper class, the senior servants handled household finances.

I'll agree that there is some LARPing. Even worse, there's a lot of admiring the problem while only offering the most sketchy of solutions. Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option isn't much more than "Go to church a lot, only hang out with other people who go to your church, homeschool your kids." It isn't bad advice, but it also isn't some sort of systemic gameplan to RETVRN. There are also, yes, trads of all types who are still living in the matrix. I can remember a conversation with a young woman whom I befriended while temporarily living in DC. She was going through pre-marriage counseling with her local Catholic priest. She was bemoaing the fact that, on a questionnaire she had her fiancee had to fill out, it asked "who will be handling the household finances?" "Tollbooth!" She steamed, "What am I supposed to do? Just stand barefoot in the kitchen all day with a baby on my hip?"

Great comment. I especially like the above.

I do think in general the hypocrisy and frankly cowardice of the RETVRN people is what turns me off quite a bit, especially the big ones like Dreher. Also, their sheer lack of charity and love. I recently saw a post by Dreher after the school shooting that was titled something like "The Trannies are Coming to Kill Your Kids!"

Perhaps my disgust and frustration is more of an aesthetic stance, I do have to admit that folks are making good arguments here against my points that we must be liberal. I also just read the essay Christ and Nothing by David Bentley Hart, and I'll admit it shifted my view on the modern, liberal consensus. (being high openness can be exhausting, sometimes.)

So, in general what do you think is a more positive vision of merging traditional society with modern technology? To me there are obvious problems, and there's also the problem of the cratering of ecclesiastic authority. Which incidentally, I don't see as a theological problem as it has happened many times before. But how do we square these issues?

So, in general what do you think is a more positive vision of merging traditional society with modern technology? To me there are obvious problems, and there's also the problem of the cratering of ecclesiastic authority. Which incidentally, I don't see as a theological problem as it has happened many times before. But how do we square these issues?

Don't make the category error of necessarily placing modern technology within modern society and values. This is actually another sleight of hand that I see a lot of people unintentionally falling into.

"Well, without the enlightenment, we would all still be living in mud huts!" Yes, without the science and technology from the enlightenment, that would be true. But that science and tech can be unbundled from modern ethical / moral / political / social values.

To more directly answer your question, technology on its own isn't inherently good or bad. People are. The same fundamental technology that vaporized tens of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could pretty much solve most of the energy "crisis" over night - but some very modern emotionalism and cultish environmental "ethics" prevent that from happening. So, the trad view is "use technology in ways that align with traditional values."

I go to a Latin Mass - they use FlockNote for parish communications. I drive my very modern F-250 to get to the church on Sundays. I text - with my cell phone - my friends there to semi-organize stuff for the socials that usually follow. I listen to numerous catholic content podcasts - which are ... podcasts ... on the internet.

I don't use my phone to watch porn. I don't drive my truck to buy drugs and hire prostitutes. I don't use the internet to consume or spread weird gender-fluid ideologies.

Yes, I do believe it really is that simple. "Values" are beliefs one holds that directly inform their behavior. You get to control your behavior, regardless of technology, however you want. No, I do not accept the idea that a fully functioning adult has zero defense against the brain cancer of social media and woke digital marketing -- 90% of the posters on the Motte are evidence of this.

I'd also go further and say that, precisely because of telecommunication technology, it is easier to collect resources on living a trad lifestyle. The entire resurgence of attendance at the Latin Mass - at least in the US - is almost certainly due in large part to people being able to organize and share locations and mass times online. Hell, there are people who didn't even know the Latin Mass still existed who get into it because they watch a few episodes of Pints With Aquinas. In a non-religious context, YouTube is full of endless videos on homesteading and homeschooling, which are two pretty strong indicators of a trad lifestyle. If you rewind to before the mass proliferation of the internet, one's ability to simply investigate different ways of living was far more constrained. Books were helpful but noone had access to the raw volume of information that now exists in everyone's pocket. Largely, you simply replicated the "culture" your parents and other family members and social circle presented. Or, you uprooted and went for a hard reset (cue California Dreamin') - but maybe only for a few years before coming back to Wisconsin and marrying that odd, shy fellow.

In my original comment, I concluded by saying that part of "being trad" (whatever you take that to mean) is rejecting the notion that "the personal is political." I'll add to that here by saying that being trad also means rejecting the naieve premise that "technology is turnin' all the kids gay!" or, to be a little more professional about it, that technological progress is inherently a threat to traditional values. I'd say, in general, technological progress simply creates more possible outcomes - some of them will / could be horrible from a trad values perspective, while others will / could be wonderful. It's in the application by a society or sub-society. Which means its in the behavior of a society / sub-society.

I strongly disagree. Technology very dramatically alters the ways societies can be shaped. While values perhaps can be neutrally separated from technology in a completely arbitrary sense, at the very least society must be arranged far differently than it was in the past.

For instance, in the past the Church and various monarchies relied on the fact that information flow was far more easily controlled amongst the peoples they governed, and indeed in history itself. With modern technology, that is no longer the case. Or even if you can re institute that picture, it would be far less secure and stable than it was in the past.

It may indeed be easier to learn about a trad society and traditional ways of living with modern technology, but that does not mean that overall social stability or status hierarchies can simply be reimposed with a trivial change in values. I believe @coffee_enjoyer understands this as well as @Tretiak, @MayorofOysterville, and others who commented on this post.

This type of response, blithely asserting that a return to traditional values with modern technology without a serious understanding (or at least discussion around) the history and the ways societal configuration has dramatically changed, is a large part of what makes me frustrated with the RETVRN movement as a whole. After all, we largely share values and want the same thing, I simply think that instrumentally we need far more intellectual prowess brought to bear on the problem.

Again, I think our core disagreement here is that "values" can somehow be instilled and kept in a society completely separated and in a vacuum from technology. There are many great writers like Ellul, Heidegger, McLuhan, and others who have persuasively argued that this is in no way the case.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing.

For instance, in the past the Church and various monarchies relied on the fact that information flow was far more easily controlled amongst the peoples they governed, and indeed in history itself. With modern technology, that is no longer the case. Or even if you can re institute that picture, it would be far less secure and stable than it was in the past.

I agree with this and readily assert that informational flow is far less controlled, far less stable, and far less secure than in the past.

but that does not mean that overall social stability or status hierarchies can simply be reimposed with a trivial change in values.

I also agree with this. The change in values isn't trivial, it takes a huge amount of personal and local community / family effort.

This type of response, blithely asserting that a return to traditional values with modern technology without a serious understanding (or at least discussion around) the history and the ways societal configuration has dramatically changed, is a large part of what makes me frustrated with the RETVRN movement as a whole.

This makes me feel bad. I think I have at least a semi-serious understanding of how technology has "dramatically changed societal configuration." And, if I'm parsing your complex sentence correctly, you're saying that my lack of understanding frustrates you? That's a rough place to be in. If stupid people (i.e. me) aggravate you, life is going to be pretty heated.

I think what you're saying is that I'm kind of hand waving away the massive effects technology has had on society. That's not my intention. My intention is to say that a lot of these impacts on society are due to very loosely held and quickly abandoned values and that a far more rigid adherence to traditional values may have get some of the more drastically negative impacts of technology in check. That's an assertion about counterfacturals, so I'm not saying it's a particularly strong argument, but it is an assertion.

I don't think being trad and not reflexively anti-tech is easy. I think it is a constant battle to figure out how to use technology appropriately while maintaining timeless values. There's a lot of failure involved. But I think throwing out the entire paradigm is foolhardy. Even more, I think that discarding traditional values because of the "overwhelming force" of technology is exactly how we got to modernism and progressivism - which we both agree are failing to live up to their promises!

Thanks for the clarification. I’ll admit I get pretty heated on this topic. I’m still a relatively new convert so I have some of the zeal alive in me, forgive me for using it improperly.

We do agree a lot more than I originally thought! I suppose your optimism clouded my judgment into thinking you were saying the task was easy, but upon a re read I can tell that’s something I simply projected onto your reply.

I also agree that traditional values and just a general focus on integrity and virtue would go a looooong way towards solving modern dysfunction.

Behold, Ye Mods!

A resolution of understanding across several originally heated comments.

REJOICE @Amadan! And spread the good news.

Also, their sheer lack of charity and love.

Are there any semi-prominent online writers that you would consider to display charity and love? Any obscure modern writers that you would consider to do so?

No, Scott doesn't count.

This isn't a defense of poor addled Dreher or merely both-sidesings. I usually like your posts and I'm trying to pin down just what you're looking for with that phrase.

Not sure what you consider semi-prominent, but frankly yeah a lot of the left at least try to display it and often do convincingly, despite the fact that they're wrong. For instance I think Ezra Klein, while he is disastrously wrong on many fronts, does display charity and love.

Many Christian writers on substack with smaller followings display charity and love, though I'll admit they aren't necessarily prominent or even semi-prominent. I suppose anger and fear do sell.

Not sure what you consider semi-prominent

That's why I left it so open!

Ezra Klein, while he is disastrously wrong on many fronts, does display charity and love

Hmm, maybe the better way to ask my question would be: how ideologically bounded is the charity and love?

What sticks in my head about Klein is supporting Yes Means Yes while being entirely conscious it's a terrible law, and the Sam Harris debacle. He displays charity where his compatriots allow, and the boundary is distinct and ideological. I am open to having missed the days of his better angels, though.

Right now some fraction of the left is going on about displaying charity and love for a murderer far more than the victim. I suppose in some sense that's better than the Dreherian alternative, but it's hardly a heart-warming display of charity in my book.

Many Christian writers on substack with smaller followings display charity and love

If you think they're worth sharing, I'm all ears.

The guy I quoted, Ross Arlen Tiekne, Yoshi Matsumoto, David Armstrong, just to name a few off the top of my head.

I'll take a look, thank you!

Some of @WhiningCoil's stories are truly terrifying.

No higher praise do I seek.

I agree that some things are never coming back. Believing in God just because, assenting to a teaching just because — that’s gone. Intelligent people need to be persuaded. They can be persuaded on rational, phenomenological, social, or utilitarian grounds. But the era of “here’s some Thomism”, “just trust the Bible”, “just trust me bro” — this is totally dead. Not a lot of serious people can take every teaching literally just because they have been told to do so.

conservatives don’t want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy

If conservatives can be persuaded to join the army to help a Godless empire plant poppies to flood their rivals with heroin, then they can be persuaded to sacrifice some pleasure for the only Empire that has ever mattered, the Kingdom of God. What made them join the army? The unthinking intuition that they can find glory there, some benefits, some camaraderie, and someone told them that their enemy is satanic. Christianity can do all of this but better, in the right form. Not only can it induce stronger allegiance to a perceived Good, but the Good is actually Good.

I go back and forth in my mind debating how much the supernatural is required to promote ideal behavior. It’s worth noting that Marxism and Nazism were both able to promote ostensibly selfless collective behavior despite having no interest in the supernatural. As were the French revolutionaries, or even the soldiers under Napoleon, or the Kamikaze pilots of Japan. But why would someone give their life for communism? Because it was seen as utopian and just and a fight against evil, and men bonded fraternally over these conclusions. This made it morally obligatory and a great way to die. You had Japanese soldiers still fighting into the 60s after WWII ended, only for their emperor! So if people are willing to die for a cause that has no supernatural aspects, why shouldn’t they be willing to live selflessly for a Christ that has no supernatural aspects? It’s worthwhile to ponder this. If obedience to God can usher in utopia, God understood in a certain way which precludes the supernatural, then it can promote ideal selfless behaviors without veering into unevidenced supernatural assertions.

Conservatives mostly don't believe America is a Godless Empire and don't read stories about the CIA messing with opium those are liberal coded. Most of those conservative soldiers joined to fight terrorists or because the military was seen as a respectable career. Many have been disillusioned but that was after they signed the dotted line.

My point was that conservatives eagerly give up all personal autonomy in the service of their nation (plus benefits), and given that they are gullible, you hardly need sophisticated argumentation to inform them the truth: America is a passing vanity that all will forget, their true citizenship is in God’s Kingdom, they are currently part of the greatest war in history, and they must suffer alongside their Commander Christ, equipping holy armor every morning and brandishing a spiritual weapon. They are compelled to believe this if they claim to follow Christ as all this is found in the Epistles.

Also, I just don’t understand the autonomy meme. In what world is autonomy a thing? We all have to spend our daylight working for someone: even being a business owner simply means you are more indebted to others. If anyone wants more autonomy, ie more free time and freedom from pressing physical and social needs, then they should earnestly pursue a utopian social ecosystem in which everyone works less and can expediently satisfy their basic needs. There is no other substantive meaning behind “autonomy”.

If conservatives can be persuaded to join the army to help a Godless empire plant poppies to flood their rivals with heroin, then they can be persuaded to sacrifice some pleasure for the only Empire that has ever mattered, the Kingdom of God.

There is difference between enlistment for good money and benefits on the other side of the world, and fighting civil war against your neighbors in the ruins of your town (without air support, without evacuation and medical care, without regular delivery of ice cream to the front line).

why shouldn’t they be willing to live selflessly for a Christ that has no supernatural aspects?

A Christ shorn of his supernatural aspects is just a charismatic ascetic who bamboozled some poor and sick people by saying spooky unverifiable nonsense. Judged purely by his personality characteristics and by the very limited record of his non-supernatural deeds, he does not come off as some great hero, nor even a stellar lifestyle role model. (He died unmarried, childless, and with seemingly no wealth, possessions, or notable professional achievements.)

I am facing this exact problem right now as I am trying to seek a religious tradition and community. Reading the Bible, I am struck yet again by how little the figure of Christ resonates with me. If one cannot bring oneself to take the leap of faith to believe that he truly was exactly what he said he was and all of his prophecies are of deep import, then it’s easy to interpret the Gospels and Acts as the record of a bunch of fairly reasonable local institutions displaying a quite healthy fear of a revolutionary doctrine urging their populace to leave their jobs and families to go follow a madman ascetic into the desert.

The faith which I’m currently earnestly investigating (Mormonism) believes that Jesus Christ was sent to earth to, among other things, set the example of the Perfect Man; humans can progress toward divinity by striving to emulate the example set by him and to try to become more Christ-like. But the best I can muster regarding Christ is that he was an example, among others, of a life path worth emulating. Certainly he has admirable characteristics — his charitable spirit toward the downtrodden, his interpersonal leadership skills, his obvious self-control and abstention from vice — but we absolutely do not want every individual in our society to attempt to emulate his life or deeds as closely as possible. There are other figures, historical or religious/mythological, who ought to be seen as equally valid life models worthy of emulation.

It might be worth reading the story of the rich young man in context. Not the tail end liberals like to point to on the internet about voluntary poverty; what Jesus’ teachings for average people are demanding. A lot of ‘keep my commands’ and not ‘wander the earth as a barefoot missionary’. We have Franciscans for that.

He can retain all titles, just understood in a different sense than the literal. The power of his love and wisdom makes him king of kings; his obedience and piety made him the son of God; his all-importance makes him Lord; and so forth. You do not have to read the gospel in a literal lense, in fact the earliest interpretations find non-literal meanings in every literal detail (eg the Samaritan woman’s five husbands refer to the five books of the Torah; the paralytic refers to spiritual paralysis).

If the gospel is a narrative of stories which indicate something deeper than the literal, then this makes it all the more the Word of God. It doesn’t make it untrue. Is it untrue that Christ cured the blind? But his wisdom has formed in mankind a vision of our ultimate altruistic priorities, billions of people have been cured of emotional or spiritual blindness from his life, and even the very Body of Christ today heals thousands of blind people yearly through charitable organizations. Is this less miraculous than a magical power? Seems pretty miraculous to me.

Judged purely by his personality characteristics and by the very limited record of his non-supernatural deeds, he does not come off as some great hero

Teaching the essence of moral wisdom while being hunted down by the leaders of your own nation is pretty heroic to me. Even just defeating the temptation to be pseudo intellectual and verbose is an act of heroism for intellectuals. So for a person who spent his life gaining wisdom to simplify his learning in digestible parables with incredible metaphorical import while living in poverty and genuinely seeking to improve the world? That’s more miraculous than rising from the dead. And doing all of this faced with the world’s worst torture, with devotion and obedience and love? I can’t think of a better hero.

nor even a stellar lifestyle role model

I don’t think Christ is supposed to be a role model for a lifestyle in that sense, but instead his inner life (spirit) is supposed to be imitated, and in regards to moral and wellbeing concerns. The ability to “carry one’s cross daily” is about inner life. Seeking the Kingdom of God is about inner life, perhaps. The inner life of Christ, namely the love and obedience and goodwill, is universally important. You can be a Christian and all the while imitate the fitness mindset of David Goggins. But the Christian part of you should drive your conscience and you should remember that you don’t want to be like Goggins in any area outside the gym.

that he was an example, among others, of a life path worth emulating

I think there’s cause to believe that, even devoid of the supernatural, a Christ-focused community is going to be greater than a community focused on any other figure. This is because civilization is driven by cooperation, and everything about Christ promotes cooperation, from the actual wisdom to the empathy of the cross to the fear of being a Judas or Pilate or Pharisee. This is a selfless hero who didn’t seek glory (or rather, he sought it only from God)* and simply desired the substantive good of Mankind. By absorbing the meaning of his story you can be a better unit of human, to put it in the driest way possible.

The faith which I’m currently earnestly investigating (Mormonism)

Not much to add here, just wanted to say if you have any questions about whatever I'm a Mormon.

A Christ shorn of his supernatural aspects is just a charismatic ascetic who bamboozled some poor and sick people by saying spooky unverifiable nonsense. Judged purely by his personality characteristics and by the very limited record of his non-supernatural deeds, he does not come off as some great hero, nor even a stellar lifestyle role model. (He died unmarried, childless, and with seemingly no wealth, possessions, or notable professional achievements.)

This is very core to the Christian mythos. Let me quote from a recent article I read on Christ and Nothing:

In any event, the purpose behind these indefensibly broad pronouncements—however elliptically pursued—is to aid in recalling how shatteringly subversive Christianity was of so many of the certitudes of the world it entered, and how profoundly its exclusive fidelity to the God of Christ transformed that world. This is, of course, no more than we should expect, if we take the New Testament’s Paschal triumphalism to heart: “Now is the judgment of this world, now will the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31); “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33); he is “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion” and all things are put “under his feet” (Ephesians 1:21-2); “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15); “he led captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8); and so on. Still, we can largely absorb Scripture’s talk of the defeat of the devil, the angels of the nations, and the powers of the air, and yet fail to recognize how radically the Gospels reinterpreted (or, as Nietzsche would say, “transvalued”) everything in the light of Easter.

The example of this I find most striking is the account John’s Gospel gives of the dialogue between Christ and Pilate (John 18:28-19:12). Nietzsche, the quixotic champion of the old standards, thought jesting Pilate’s “What is truth?” to be the only moment of actual nobility in the New Testament, the wry taunt of an acerbic ironist unimpressed by the pathetic fantasies of a deranged peasant. But one need not share Nietzsche’s sympathies to take his point; one can certainly see what is at stake when Christ, scourged and mocked, is brought before Pilate a second time: the latter’s “Whence art thou?” has about it something of a demand for a pedigree, which might at least lend some credibility to the claims Christ makes for himself; for want of which, Pilate can do little other than pronounce his truth: “I have power to crucify thee” (which, to be fair, would under most circumstances be an incontrovertible argument).

It is worth asking ourselves what this tableau, viewed from the vantage of pagan antiquity, would have meant. A man of noble birth, representing the power of Rome, endowed with authority over life and death, confronted by a barbarous colonial of no name or estate, a slave of the empire, beaten, robed in purple, crowned with thorns, insanely invoking an otherworldly kingdom and some esoteric truth, unaware of either his absurdity or his judge’s eminence. Who could have doubted where, between these two, the truth of things was to be found? But the Gospel is written in the light of the resurrection, which reverses the meaning of this scene entirely. If God’s truth is in fact to be found where Christ stands, the mockery visited on him redounds instead upon the emperor, all of whose regal finery, when set beside the majesty of the servile shape in which God reveals Himself, shows itself to be just so many rags and briars.

This slave is the Father’s eternal Word, whom God has vindicated, and so ten thousand immemorial certainties are unveiled as lies: the first become last, the mighty are put down from their seats and the lowly exalted, the hungry are filled with good things while the rich are sent empty away. Nietzsche was quite right to be appalled. Almost as striking, for me, is the tale of Peter, at the cock’s crow, going apart to weep. Nowhere in the literature of pagan antiquity, I assure you, had the tears of a rustic been regarded as worthy of anything but ridicule; to treat them with reverence, as meaningful expressions of real human sorrow, would have seemed grotesque from the perspective of all the classical canons of good taste. Those wretchedly subversive tears, and the dangerous philistinism of a narrator so incorrigibly vulgar as to treat them with anything but contempt, were most definitely signs of a slave revolt in morality, if not quite the one against which Nietzsche inveighed—a revolt, moreover, that all the ancient powers proved impotent to resist.

You may also want to read some Girardian thought on the matter of how Christ can be so impactful while being so weak. I have thoroughly enjoyed Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads.

Believing in God just because, assenting to a teaching just because — that’s gone. Intelligent people need to be persuaded.

I think this has pretty much always been the case. Apologetics is a very old discipline for this reason.

So if people are willing to die for a cause that has no supernatural aspects, why shouldn’t they be willing to live selflessly for a Christ that has no supernatural aspects?

This is underdiscussed (in part because of what those people did) but people absolutely are and this explains a lot of the last century and a half or so. Progressivism took some moral cues and language from Christianity but in practice was often essentially materialistic. I think this was truer in Europe than in the United States but as I understand it lot of mainline Protestantism was retreating from the supernatural and fiddling with cool new social causes to usher in a utopia as you say. Embarrassingly, those causes turned out to be things like "eugenics" and "banning alcohol" and a lot of the "progress" that was made was unwound and then memory-holed, but people are absolutely willing to live selflessly for a Christ with no supernatural aspects.

Part of the problem is that when you strip the supernatural aspects from Christ, there's not much left that isn't subject to radical reinterpretation (if you read the Gospels Christ arguably tends to rain on utopian parades in favor of, well, the supernatural gift of everlasting life). Hence the modern progressives are basically radically opposed to their forebears from 100 years ago even despite the much-remarked-upon resemblance of "woke progressivism" to a "secular" "religion" – the through-line is essentially the same. What's missing is consistency – progressivism has flitted from cause to cause and emphasis to emphasis from decade to decade. I don't think religions are free of this at all, but grounding the authority of a religion in a transcendent supernatural does provide a focal point for a religion to return to. Progressives of today can't return to the writings of their forebears from the 1880s or 1920s because those guys were all incredibly racist by today's standards and nobody – not even the authors – are claiming to be inspired.

Marxism comes the closest to this – and perhaps this explains its enduring power – because it claims to be a MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE and thus inevitable, which is a sneaky way of claiming to be infallible WITHOUT invoking the Divine.

I think this has pretty much always been the case. Apologetics is a very old discipline for this reason.

I agree with this. For example, look at Aquinas (though he was hardly the first of course) - dude spent a huge amount of effort trying to make rational arguments for tenets of the faith. And he was hardly a modern thinker, he was very much medieval! Moreover, I would go further and say that contra @coffee_enjoyer, the people who could be convinced without apologetics are not gone. There have always been, and will always be, people who don't engage with things on an intellectual level. They go based on vibes, or what is cool, or things like that. I think it's easy to figure that sort of person is gone because to most of us, they may as well not exist. Most people here exist in a very skewed bubble of smart people who like to discuss things intellectually, but there are definitely plenty of people today who don't enjoy that sort of thing (and who would even be put off by it).

Also, I think it's very much the case that even with apologetics one still has to take a leap of faith. I have my reasons for believing, but at the end of the day I don't know. I decided that the arguments for belief were stronger than those against, but the arguments for still could be mistaken. I'll only truly know when I die (if even then, because perhaps I'll go into an endless oblivion where I won't even exist to know I was wrong in this life). But I still believe, even so.

Also, I think it's very much the case that even with apologetics one still has to take a leap of faith.

Yes, I absolutely think this is correct. Even think about the New Testament – it's very clear that the very Apostles who had Christ appear to them had to have faith that God's promises to them would be fulfilled.

You’re underestimating how easy it was to do apologetics before the Age of Enlightenment. There was a time when you could say, “consider the phoenix of Arabia, the bird which resurrects itself every 500 years, as proof of resurrection”, and people were like “oh yeah, I mean that’s a good argument, everyone knows about the phoenix”. This is an argument that Clement makes, one of our first apologists, repeated by Origen and others. (It also happens to be an interesting topic of debate regarding the right meaning of monogenes). Augustine makes a similar argument in regards to the Pelican, which everyone knows feeds its young from its own flesh. When Paul argued about the resurrection of the dead, he pointed out that the stars are spiritual bodies with their own glory, and as you know these were once especially righteous mortals —

The stars overhead were thought to be divine or angelic intelligences (as we see reflected in James 1:17 and 2 Peter 2:10-11). And it was a conviction common to a good many pagans and Jews alike that the ultimate destiny of great or especially righteous souls was to be elevated into the heavens to shine as stars (as we see in Daniel 12:3 and Wisdom 3:7, and as may be hinted at in 1 Corinthians 15:30-41)

The first apologist we have is Justin Martyr, a former philosopher who studied Platonism, and while he begins his Dialogue of Trypho entertaining the notion of philosophy, he quickly discards it as being worthless entirely, with only the Prophets having knowledge of the divine.

There existed, long before this time, certain men more ancient than all those who are esteemed philosophers, both righteous and beloved by God, who spoke by the Divine Spirit, and foretold events which would take place, and which are now taking place. They are called prophets. These alone both saw and announced the truth to men [...] For they did not use demonstration in their treatises, seeing that they were witnesses to the truth above all demonstration, and worthy of belief; and those events which have happened, and those which are happening, compel you to assent to the utterances made by them […] for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom.

And this is the whole beginning of apology: a disinterest in philosophy in favor of prophecy. The early Christians were blessed that they could point to 500 years of writings predicting Christ; this would have constituted excellent evidence for men who believed in phoenixes and spiritual stars. And the secrecy of the faith made it even more compelling. But who would be convinced by this today? We are 2000 years removed. We need something else.

Christ arguably tends to rain on utopian parades in favor of, well, the supernatural gift of everlasting life

There are many changes that a Christian is supposed to effect in the world, however, from reducing sin to increasing love and brotherhood to sharing in wealth. This is the Kingdom on Earth, the Kingdom within us, the God who is love and so forth. Why should these need to be done with eternal life in mind? 20th century social movements are evidence against that. And I wonder how important eternal life really is for establishing moral behavior. Where are the people selling all they have to be perfect, for an even greater reward in the life to come? They are so rare as to be essentially nonexistent. I don’t mean the ones who get free room and board at a beautiful monastery, that’s different. If a religion like Catholicism with all the bells and smells cannot actually induce the rich to depart from their wealth when this would confer perfection, extra rewards, and possibly even sainthood, then eternal life is probably useless for motivating righteous conduct. It may be very useful as palliative care for those whose lives are utter torment, but then so can thankful and gratitude and some other practices.

Where are the people selling all they have to be perfect, for an even greater reward in the life to come? They are so rare as to be essentially nonexistent. I don’t mean the ones who get free room and board at a beautiful monastery, that’s different.

No it is not.

The rich young man asked Jesus how to follow Him, and was told to keep His commands, he clarified he wished to follow more closely and then was told to sell all he has, give to the poor. Perhaps the most literal example was st Francis of Assisi, who founded a religious order.

There is a robust Christian tradition of monastics warning against those who seek to practice voluntary poverty and asceticism without submission to a religious structure. Entering a religious order is what Jesus meant when he said that.

That’s not quite it. He asked what he should do to receive eternal life and be perfect. When he was unable to do this, Jesus replied

Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God

and

everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life

Who would refuse this offer? A hundredfold of everything you give up, for eternal life?

Perhaps the most literal example was st Francis of Assisi, who founded a religious order.

St Francis began to live in poverty five years before his religious order was authorized. St Francis actually took Jesus at his word and believed in the promises, which was as rare then as it is now.

You’re underestimating how easy it was to do apologetics before the Age of Enlightenment. There was a time when you could say, “consider the phoenix of Arabia, the bird which resurrects itself every 500 years, as proof of resurrection”, and people were like “oh yeah, I mean that’s a good argument, everyone knows about the phoenix”.

Did most people know about the phoenix or was Clement – an educated philosopher – writing to other educated men about something that they would be familiar with through reading the elite texts of the day, such as Herodotus? I imagine it's difficult to know for certain, since illiterate people don't leave records of what they are and aren't familiar with, but an educated philosopher referencing a creature that was described by the elite educated classes of the era seems...well, similar to modern apologists who reference modern scientific or historical consensus when attempting to reach their audience.

So it is with the rest of your examples (although I would say that Paul predates Justin Martyr) – it's educated people writing to convince educated people, at least in part. (I would say that the actual track record of Christianity as regards philosophy is much more mixed than one of outright rejection, but I'm not sure if you want to go down that rabbit hole).

The early Christians were blessed that they could point to 500 years of writings predicting Christ; this would have constituted excellent evidence for men who believed in phoenixes and spiritual stars. And the secrecy of the faith made it even more compelling. But who would be convinced by this today?

As I have pointed out before, modern Americans believe in stuff like poltergeists, so when you say "who would be convinced by this today" the answer as regards very specific cultural idioms like the phoenix is "not very many people" but substitute in something from our modern mythology (say – an argument for the resurrection of the dead based on the reality of ghosts) and a lot of people would probably nod along like "oh yeah, I mean that's a good argument, everybody knows ghosts are real."

We are 2000 years removed. We need something else.

And a number of other interesting arguments have been advanced in the intervening period – apologetics has hardly stood still. (I'll take this moment to note that a few weeks ago here on the Motte our peers were expressing a high degree of confidence that Jeffrey Epstein was assassinated based on, essentially, a single correct prediction by "the conspiracy theory crowd" that he would die in custody. If some Mottizens can find a single-point correct prediction so convincing – and I generally assume people on here are pretty smart by the standards of our day – then I find it hardly surprising that what you describe as 500 years of predictions of Christ suffice to convince people, whether today or in the 1st century.)

20th century social movements are evidence against that.

If you think the 20th century social movements were bad then I think it's not unreasonable to take it as evidence that doing social movements without eternal life in mind is a bad idea. (I think it's merely suggestive, not a necessary conclusion.)

And I wonder how important eternal life really is for establishing moral behavior. Where are the people selling all they have to be perfect, for an even greater reward in the life to come? They are so rare as to be essentially nonexistent. I don’t mean the ones who get free room and board at a beautiful monastery, that’s different. If a religion like Catholicism with all the bells and smells cannot actually induce the rich to depart from their wealth when this would confer perfection, extra rewards, and possibly even sainthood, then eternal life is probably useless for motivating righteous conduct.

Well it's interesting you say this, because while I understand the sentiment, it's directionally wrong. Perhaps it's true that visible displays of people giving all that they have to the poor are rare (but note that doing this is specifically condemned by Christianity, so it's not surprising that this is the case) but religious people are more generous than nonreligious people.

Sure, but the phoenix and the pelican in question are pretty crazy creatures to believe in. If they believed these creatures existed based on testimony, and believed it for centuries, then they had a default level of gullibility that has been lost since the advent of science. You can no longer say “this prophet says so” or “this magical creature shows that resurrection is possible” or “the Greek Oracles prophecied the coming of Christ” or “500 people say they saw resurrected Jesus” and expect smart people to believe it. Especially when they now have different competing faiths making claims of the exact same quality. If these intellectuals were so gullible, we can only imagine how gullible the common folk were.

modern Americans believe in stuff like poltergeists

If I were asked on a poll if I believe in ghosts there’s a fair chance I’d say yes for the hell of it. I don’t think smart people really believe in ghosts outside of tricks of the mind. I think if a smart American were consistently haunted by a ghost, he would book a visit with a psychiatrist. He probably wouldn’t be telling his coworkers about the ghost he hangs out with every night. Although maybe it would help on dating apps for picking up goth chicks.

if you think the 20th century social movements were bad then I think it's not unreasonable to take it as evidence that doing social movements without eternal life in mind is a bad idea

No religion emphasizes eternal life more than Islam. Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue? I imagine not. I think the reason that the 20th century social movements failed is that the clung to the wrong moral focus. They missed the mark by a lot. They needed to focus on something which induces epistemic humility, local sphere of concern, and selflessness.

charity

That’s tangential to my main point. I know religious people give more to charity. This is one of the reasons religion should never go away. (Although I find collection baskets extremely evil, subtly shaming the poor). If you believe that this life is not even 0.01% of your whole existence, and you can ensure the 99.99% of your life will be even better by selling everything to the poor, then what reasonable person wouldn’t do it? This is like Mr Beast giving you a contract saying, “sell everything, spend a week begging for alms, and I’ll give you 100 million dollars”. Everyone would do this, surely. So why aren’t any Christians doing the eternal cosmic 100% assured Mr Beast challenge? I know I would if I really believed it. And there are Hindus who do this with their gods and traditions! Do the Hindus have more faith in their demons than the Christian has faith in the True God? I would like to think that there’s something else at play here, a deeper psychology.

there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life

If I believed this, I would sell everything to go preach Christianity to Muslims in the most remote corners of the Middle East. If they kill me, it only expedites my paradise. But it’s a frankly unbelievable proposition, which is why no Christian sells all he has to go preach somewhere he knows he will be killed. It’s not because they’re cowards or anything, it’s just that the more reasonable part of them prevents their “put on social identity” from really believing in the claims. IMO.

Sure, but the phoenix and the pelican in question are pretty crazy creatures to believe in.

The Phoenix is a little weird. The Pelican's not really weird at all; matriphagy is a real thing, it just happens that actual pelicans don't seem to practice it. The sexual parasitism practiced by the anglerfish is weirder than matriphagy in my mind, should I not believe in that?

I don’t think smart people really believe in ghosts outside of tricks of the mind.

This is absolutely not true, just in my personal experience. (Incidentally, did you know that increased education in the United States is correlated with increased levels of religious attendance?) But you don't have to believe in my experience: the educated class in the States takes stuff like poltergeists seriously enough that outlets like the New York Times write serious stories about exorcists. (To be fair, I am collapsing ghosts and demons into one category here, I suppose.)

Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue? I imagine not.

Yes, absolutely. You can see this, for instance, in how the Taliban (religious zealots) outcompeted the nominally Islamic tribal grounds in Afghanistan and started cracking down on pederasty, which was traditionally practiced and accepted. Cooperation led to victory, and victory led to virtue.

If you believe that this life is not even 0.01% of your whole existence, and you can ensure the 99.99% of your life will be even better by selling everything to the poor, then what reasonable person wouldn’t do it?

Well, under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor, so presumably that's at least part of the reason Christians don't do it. I cannot really speak to the Hindus.

But it’s a frankly unbelievable proposition, which is why no Christian sells all he has to go preach somewhere he knows he will be killed.

This famously does happen, though! The last guy killed by the Sentinelese was a Christian missionary.

The other groups in Afghanistan were not nominally Islamic, they were all practicing Muslims. The Taliban succeeded not because of a belief in the afterlife, which is shared by all Afghans, but because they are an extremist brotherhood oriented around a moral ideal that they are constantly reinforcing to the exclusion of everything else literally all the time. The Bolsheviks had no belief in an afterlife, yet they completely defeated the Orthodox Christians who had such a belief. Same re the French revolutionaries. Did the Greeks and Romans lack courage in battle? Or the North Vietnamese, or the North Koreans? Or the Japanese — who fought more courageously than the Japanese? There’s no clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental here.

I think “under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor” is an enormous cop-out. But instead of getting into the weeds with whether poverty is literally a mark of perfection, I’ll say that I know a lot of Christians and they all enjoy your typical American consumer activity and wasteful purchases. I know one particularly prominent Catholic family and they have enormous mansions and nice cars. How is it that Warren Buffet lives more frugally than a major Catholic figure who sits in the front row at Papal visits? It can only be that they don’t genuinely believe in the rewards of heaven, which if believed would necessarily result in maximal charitable activity (certainly not mansions and luxury cars). At the very least, the threat of hell for being rich should be enough to get them to abstain from these sorts of purchases.

This famously does happen, though

As a 1 in 200 million chance? It’s famously unusual.

At the very least, the threat of hell for being rich should be enough to get them to abstain from these sorts of purchases.

God presumably knows you're rich whether or not you make ostentatious purchases. Certainly he knows that Warren Buffet is rich, that little house doesn't fool anyone. If you're going to hell for being rich, you may as well enjoy yourself before you go.

The other groups in Afghanistan were not nominally Islamic, they were all practicing Muslims.

I suppose this depends on who you ask but the Taliban seem to think that practicing pederasty is incompatible with correct Islamic practice.

There’s no clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental here.

There's very clear evidence that an afterlife is instrumental. You're shifting the standard to claiming that the belief in an afterlife will always and everywhere prevail. But remember, you said

Do you think their constant obsession with the rewards of the next life have aided their cooperation and virtue?

And I would say – yes, clearly.

I think “under certain circumstances Christianity actually condemns selling everything to the poor” is an enormous cop-out.

Why? Why shouldn't Christians be judged according to their own teachings? I don't even disagree with you that Christians often fall short of their own teachings – and it's fine to criticize that – but it's important to understand those teachings first. If Christianity specifically teaches that one's first duty is to one's family and dependents it is silly to criticize Christians with family and dependents for not impoverishing them to give to charity (see perhaps most notably 1 Timothy 5:8, which compares failing to provide for one's own house with apostasy!)

Now – I don't disagree with you that Christians often act as if they do not believe what they say that they do. I do this, to my shame. But – to your point about faith – the people in the first century whom you suggest had such an easy time believing in Christ ALSO did this! If your idea that belief is harder now is correct and that is why Christians today act as if they do not believe was right, we would expect the first century church not to have that issue. One need only read the writings of first century Christians to be disabused of that notion.

And today people do this in other areas quite frequently (for instance lots of people know that drinking is bad for them...), unfortunately. The fact that people today, or in the first century, act contrary to their own professed belief and knowledge has little bearing on the belief itself (alcohol IS bad for you even if you act as if it isn't!)

I know one particularly prominent Catholic family and they have enormous mansions and nice cars...It can only be that they don’t genuinely believe in the rewards of heaven, which if believed would necessarily result in maximal charitable activity (certainly not mansions and luxury cars). At the very least, the threat of hell for being rich should be enough to get them to abstain from these sorts of purchases.

Well perhaps they are familiar enough with Catholic doctrine (as I think I am, although I am not Catholic) to know that that's not how salvation works in Catholic teaching.

The verse you are probably thinking of is as follows:

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” - Matthew 19:23 - 28.

Not stated in the text here (even as a riddle or hyperbole): "rich people go to hell." Nor is that a teaching of Catholic doctrine as I understand it.

Now, it IS true that there's a certain tension in Christianity, especially early Christianity, with wealth (see for instance James 2, but note that James does not advocate for kicking the wealthy out of the church!) But on the flip side, I certainly can't think of any sort of general command in Christianity for people to sell all they have and give it to the poor (the instruction in Matthew 19 was to a specific individual – although quite arguably it applies more broadly! – and you can see in Acts 5:1 - 4 that even in the early church described in Acts 4 liquidation of wealth to give to those in need was entirely voluntary.)

It’s famously unusual.

I don't disagree that the very specific thing you said never happens is unusual. :)

More comments

Sure, but the phoenix and the pelican in question are pretty crazy creatures to believe in. If they believed these creatures existed based on testimony, and believed it for centuries, then they had a default level of gullibility that has been lost since the advent of science.

Efficient central planning.
Iron laws of history.
New Soviet Man.
Sluggish Schizophrenia.
Lysenkoism.
Sparrow Extermination.
Rape Culture.
Stereotype threat.
Growth Mindset.
Structural racism.
Gender Identity.
Masks stop the spread.
The wage gap.
The science of Criminal Rehabilitation.

How long do you think we could make this list if we actually tried to be rigorous about it?

No "default level of gullibility" was lost with the advent of science. The overwhelming majority of people do not understand science and do not base their beliefs on scientific rules. Not even the overwhelming majority of scientists do this. I am skeptical that even a slim majority of scientists do this even with regard to the science they themselves personally conduct.

For at least half of these, a scientist could point to real data, but they misinterpreted or fudged the data. That’s different than believing the claims of supernatural religion, which do not require a scientific intermediary for interpretation. Why would it be gullible to believe in “growth mindset” if there are studies on it, but then later studies disproved it? The issue here is that the common person is led to believe in the findings of popular science, because schools teach that.

If I make a claim like “prayer works” or “God does miracles”, even someone with a very low IQ can tell that prayer does not work as claimed, and that miracles appear to have stopped around the same time that scientific instruments and recording came along. The issue of superstition is an enormous stumbling block that prevents tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people, from ever considering religious activity. Because they don’t like to be tricked. And trust in science similarly suffers when people realize they are tricked by science. But trust in reasoning doesn’t normally suffer.

or at least half of these, a scientist could point to real data, but they misinterpreted or fudged the data.

For all of these, a human wrote symbols on a page, and then some other human read those symbols and assumed they accurately reflected ground truth. Coincidentally, I am pretty sure this is exactly how people came to believe in the phoenix. I do not see why I should consider the Phoenix as meaningfully more fantastical than the snail darter. Both are creatures that do not exist, whose salient properties are entirely fictitious.

Why would it be gullible to believe in “growth mindset” if there are studies on it, but then later studies disproved it?

Yes, because "studies" just reduces to "authorities said so", and who these authorities are and why they're considered authorities doesn't seem to ground out in any rigorous scientific process, now or ever. "Studies show" is an assumption of reliability, in the same way that people used to assume Plato or Aristotle or whoever were reliable. I see no evidence that it is any more rigorous that the authorities that preceded it. Sure, you can up the reliability by carving away the worst examples via arbitrary hindsight. And I can do the same for the ancients; I bet Pythagoras' math is pretty solid.

The issue here is that the common person is led to believe in the findings of popular science, because schools teach that.

It appears to me that scientists also routinely believe the findings of popular science as well, for similar reasons. People trust authorities to be reliable, and the important word in "consensus reality" is consensus. Also, scientists remain people.

If I make a claim like “prayer works” or “God does miracles”, even someone with a very low IQ can tell that prayer does not work as claimed, and that miracles appear to have stopped around the same time that scientific instruments and recording came along.

IIRC, we actually have records of first- and second-generation Christians writing about how miracles had dried up over the course of their lifetime, and the bible itself records numerous instances of fraudulent or illegitimate miracle-workers or magicians. And this about a millennia and a half before scientific instruments and recording came along. Nor is it obvious to me that "prayer does not work as claimed", in contrast to "most people do not understand how prayer is claimed to work".

But more importantly, the point is not that people used to believe in things that did not exist, that they had no good reason beyond appeals to authority and peer pressure to believe existed. The point is that people never stopped believing such things, and continue to believe them to this day.

The issue of superstition is an enormous stumbling block that prevents tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people, from ever considering religious activity.

...But notably does not prevent them from believing any variety of other superstitions, so long as those superstitions are framed as "scientific". There is no functional difference between sacred oil and patent medicine; it's a paint job, that's all.

But trust in reasoning doesn’t normally suffer.

No it doesn't. That's how they keep getting fooled; science was used to lie to them a hundred times before, but that was all isolated bad actors; this new claim is of course trustworthy, because it's science! Everyone knows that, how silly could you be to doubt it?

Have you read any of David Bentley Hart's work? He's my favorite modern apologist at the moment, and you might like him. Especially The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. He makes strong arguments for how the Gospel can be instrumentally useful while still supernatural.

I very much don't feel like a LARPer. I don't think Feser - one of the staunchest modern defenders of Scholastic Metaphysics - is a LARPer.

I also wouldn't describe myself as a Trad, because that means something very specific in my religious tradition. I attend a normal mass at a normal parish.

But I also 100% believe in all of it. Heaven, Hell, the way of Illumination, Theosis, Divine Simplicity, Trinity of Lover, Beloved, and the Love that Unites, submission to local bishop, souls that are the form of the body, demons, etc. These things are more real to me than the Declaration of Independence and I have had as much personal experience with the governance of the Church as the governance of my civil authorities.

I believe true freedom is the freedom that comes from discipline and learning how to work within a system outside of my experiences. The freedom of playing a piano well is not the same as pressing keys as the whim takes me. Enlightenment conceptions of freedom seem to me more like a toddler banging on a keyboard "freely."

I'm sure there are some LARPers somewhere, but there are still many people who were born into these traditions. If both mother and father or just father attended church weekly, their kids have a 1/3 likelihood of attending church weekly as well. Converts are a small group compared with those who are hereditary Christians.

Ultimately if conservatives try to force a return to pre-modern times, not only may we lose technological advances, we also don't even have the living traditional to fall back to anymore.

Those who are Amish are already Amish. I don't know where the idea comes from that we will lose technological advances if we start having a more pre-modern outlook on usury, for instance. The rate of acquiring new advances might decrease, but some total collapse back to the bronze age isn't necessary or desired by anyone I'm aware of.

But I also 100% believe in all of it. Heaven, Hell, the way of Illumination, Theosis, Divine Simplicity, Trinity of Lover, Beloved, and the Love that Unites, submission to local bishop, souls that are the form of the body, demons, etc. These things are more real to me than the Declaration of Independence and I have had as much personal experience with the governance of the Church as the governance of my civil authorities.

I agree with all this, and agree that we must believe in it to be seriously Christian. I suppose I'm more talking about forcing people to believe via authority - that is right out.

Unfortunately much of Christendom seems to want to return to the era when ecclesiastical authority was the rule, and to cross it was to risk death. I disagree that Christ would've wanted such a setup.

I really disagree with that. I think most of Christendom, as in practicing believers, just want a republic with a more conservative baseline.

I think this is true of the average believer as well. Perhaps because of perverse dynamics, it does not seem to be true of the average public intellectual or writer who represents the traditional view.

I'd like to push back on the idea that crossing ecclesiastical authority risked death. I feel like that's a model of the Middle Ages that is more conceived on 18th century propaganda instead of the actual historical record. Even when the Papal States had an executioner, he was part of the civil courts, not the ecclesiastical courts. He executed thieves and assassins, not heretics. Ecclesiastical courts were not allowed to kill anyone at all, and there is good reason for that. That's not to say they were infallible bastions of perfect goodness and mercy, but they aren't the opposite either. They were courts.

People accused by civil authorities of crimes begged to be tried by the Inquisition because the Inquisition had a higher standard of evidence. And so on and so forth.

What you might object to most strongly crosses over into the other aspect of your comment - forcing people to believe via authority. So I will touch on that first before a deeper discussion on persecuting heretics.

In the Middle Ages, people were not forced to believe via authority. Forced baptisms are illicit, and pagans converted in droves without threat of force. Rather, people believed because it was the air they breathed. Not being a Christian would be like being a Flat Earther today.

Taking the analogy further, lots of people today believe the Earth is round because that is how it is depicted in art. Maybe they were lucky enough to be exposed to a globe as a child. They heard stories and have seen relics of people going to space and seeing the round Earth. They are not forced to believe the Earth is round under threat of torture. It'd be frankly bizarre for them to think the Earth was Flat.

Any American today had the opportunity to take high-school level Trigonometry and be able to prove that the Earth is round based on measuring shadows and traveling 100 miles, a trivial feat compared to how difficult it would be to prove to oneself in the past. But why would they? Who is suspicious enough to do so?

And moreover, basic facts about the world, like the shape of the Earth, shouldn't be accessible only to those with above-average intelligence and a car. It would be bizarre to make a society that is agnostic about the shape of the Earth because we wouldn't want to unduly influence belief.

The Medieval mind was as convinced about the truth of Christianity as we are about the roundness of the Earth. Those with the intelligence to prove it made sure that this important knowledge was accessible to all. And I believe they did prove the existence of God and that there is more proof today than there was in the past. And that anyone smart enough who goes through 4-6 years of specialized education and spiritual formation (that is very hard to get these days) will agree, if we could just get them to take the opportunity cost to get there.

Here is where the analogy is inadequate - the problem of heretics. Because it doesn't really matter to a functioning society if there is a group of people who think the Earth is flat. We pity them, we ignore them, even if one of our own children became a flat Earther we would still harbor a vague hope that they could still life a good life, even if you stop trusting their judgement on other things.

But in the case of Christianity, there is a huge emphasis on Orthodoxy (right belief) and Orthopraxy (right practice.) And if you tip the balance so that the ignorant masses are now divided in belief, they are going to believe all sorts of things, very few of which are results of a systematic fact-finding methodology. And if you have midwits choosing beliefs randomly, you have disagreement and dissension and civil wars and that is why the CIVIL authorities executed heretics and waged crusades against them.

Because the Cathars had beliefs that were society-ending and spread them at an alarming rate to people who didn't know better. Because if you're a Protestant Lord and some of your subjects are Catholics then they have an obligation to defy your authority at times, and you can't have that.

The problem the Medieval were trying to solve wasn't that everyone is by default agnostic and they needed to be forced at knifepoint to be Catholic. The problem they were trying to solve is that people all too easily believe whatever their slightly-smarter neighbor tells them is a good idea and this can upend society. Like "marriage and sex are evil" and "men and women are interchangable."

But wait, didn't we enlightened Americans figure out a way for multiple people with a plurality of different ideologies and religions to live together in peace and harmony without society collapsing?

...I certainly hope so. But I think only time can tell.

I'd like to push back on the idea that crossing ecclesiastical authority risked death. I feel like that's a model of the Middle Ages that is more conceived on 18th century propaganda instead of the actual historical record. Even when the Papal States had an executioner, he was part of the civil courts, not the ecclesiastical courts. He executed thieves and assassins, not heretics. Ecclesiastical courts were not allowed to kill anyone at all, and there is good reason for that. That's not to say they were infallible bastions of perfect goodness and mercy, but they aren't the opposite either. They were courts.

This is disingenuous. Yes, the church generally didn't execute heretics however heresy was also a secular crime everywhere. This is like saying that judges never imprison anyone because they don't personally run prisons.

The Medieval mind was as convinced about the truth of Christianity as we are about the roundness of the Earth. Those with the intelligence to prove it made sure that this important knowledge was accessible to all. And I believe they did prove the existence of God and that there is more proof today than there was in the past. And that anyone smart enough who goes through 4-6 years of specialized education and spiritual formation (that is very hard to get these days) will agree, if we could just get them to take the opportunity cost to get there.

The standards of "truthness" in a manuscript society, pre-enlightenment society were just very different from our own, it was underpinned by authority. When books were very expensive you had to believe that if something was copied by everyone it was good and that the objection that you found had been addressed by someone somewhere, you had to be the one that was equivocated but you had no way to verify it.

Plenty of falsehoods that could be trivially proven false proliferated. The most important textbook of the middle ages, the etymologies of st. isidor, told you that diamonds were made soft by goat blood and garlic demagnetized magnets, mathematicians studied and believed the aristotelian cosmology despite it being incompatible with the ptolemaic model which they also knew and employed day to day or, for that matter, didn't match geographical knowledge (see for example Alighieri's Questio de Aqua et Terra) or even phisicians who believed in the existence of a rete mirabilis in humans and a spermatic duct connecting the brain to the penis (as Galen said, sperm is stored in the brain) despite presiding over cadaver dissections that had no such things.

I don't think you could convince many people today with medieval arguments because they went like this:

  • It is true because every civilized society believes it or is muslim, a chistian heresy (i.e. argument from universal assent). This wasn't true back then, they just didn't know about china, and it isn't true today.
  • It is true because the bible, the best historical record through eyewitness account that we have, says it is. This was true back then but now we know the bible is trash when it comes to historical accuracy.
  • It is true because [various arguments from classical theology]. Most of these don't hold because we proved actual infinity isn't logically contradictory.

I wonder what we believe today that those in the future will find laughable.

This was true back then but now we know the bible is trash when it comes to historical accuracy.

If you checked out of scholarship in the 80s, I can see why you would think so. That is a less defensible sentiment today. Fifty years ago, people got away with saying that King David is a myth, now we have his coins. Excavations have revealed architecture described in the New Testament that has been hidden since the 2nd century. Where it gets hazy is where you would expect it to be hazy - what archaeological evidence would you expect the Exodus to leave behind? There is some evidence, nothing conclusive, but I wouldn't expect there to be given the short time length of the event and the amount of evidence nomadic peoples typically leave behind.

But that doesn't hold many problems for the Traditional Catholic, as the traditional view has viewed the Joshua and Conquest in an allegorical sense. Joshua as a Christ figure, demonstrates the importance of eradicating evil entirely and giving it no quarter. A large part of reading the Bible is knowing what the genre is of the book you're reading.

To the Christian claims, the important thing to get historically accurate is the Gospels, and the Gospels were written in the genre of Ancient Biography. They at least tried to get it right, and there is increasing evidence that they were written early and by eyewitnesses..

All attempts to date the Gospel after AD 70 rely in the logic of, "Well, we know Jesus wasn't God, so He can't have predicted the fall of the Temple ahead of time (never mind there were other people predicting the fall of the Temple in the decade leading up to it,) and so the Gospels all had to be written after AD 70." And dating the Gospels before AD 70 is more like, "The Gospels tell their readers to do things at the Temple, and that is a weird prescription if the Temple is already destroyed. And Acts leads up the climatic trial of Paul in Rome but doesn't cover it, which would seem to indicate that it was completed before his execution. And look here, and look there, at all these weird coincidences that only make sense if they were written in the 50s and 60s."

Most of these don't hold because we proved actual infinity isn't logically contradictory.

Which proof do you think relies on actual infinity being logically contradictory? St. Thomas famously believed we couldn't prove the universe was finite through just philosophy, and his Cosmological argument does not require the universe to have had a beginning. Maybe you're most exposed to Kalam's argument, which is impossible to defend on pure philosophical grounds, though people try to defend it still with a combo of scientific evidence and philosophy.

what archaeological evidence would you expect the Exodus to leave behind?

Which Exodus? Hundreds of thousands of people into Canaan? Or maybe just the Levites? Just between those two positions you have an incredible difference in how likely you'd be to find evidence.

Yeah, I'm more sympathetic to the view that the word for "thousand" meant something like "platoon" of indeterminate size. The link in that paragraph goes to a book where five different scholars argue five different positions on when the Exodus happened: early dating, late dating, no exodus at all, exodus as a cultural memory of multiple migrations from Egypt, etc. It was an interesting format, something like a long-form Reddit argument or written debate-brawl. I recommend the book if you are interested in the topic.

I wonder what we believe today that those in the future will find laughable.

PS. I don't think those arguments were laughable btw, I probably would have been convinced by them.

We probably are convinced by a bunch of bad research, given the replication crisis.

If you checked out of scholarship in the 80s, I can see why you would think so. That is a less defensible sentiment today. Fifty years ago, people got away with saying that King David is a myth, now we have his coins

Cute, however the world is not 6000 years old, Moses is a probably a fictional character and certainly not the author of the Deuteronomy, there was no widespread captivity in Egypt, etc etc

To the Christian claims, the important thing to get historically accurate is the Gospels, and the Gospels were written in the genre of Ancient Biography. They at least tried to get it right, and there is increasing evidence that they were written early and by eyewitnesses..

That where one scholar is going but not where scholarship in general is going, that would be the other direction. And no eyewitnessess, whoever wrote the cleansing of the temple probably didn't even have a passing familiarity with the temple, for example.

All attempts to date the Gospel after AD 70 rely in the logic of, "Well, we know Jesus wasn't God, so He can't have predicted the fall of the Temple ahead of time

It doesn't matter when the prediction was made, it's that predictions only become relevant after they become true, it wouldn't have been written about. But beyond that it's how it's treated, as inevitable rather than a menace. And beyond that it's the lack of references to the gospels from other sources, consider how many times the authentic letters of Paul could have quoted Jesus from the gospels but didn't. That means they were written after.

The Gospels tell their readers to do things at the Temple, and that is a weird prescription if the Temple is already destroyed

The offering to the Temple was a big part of jewish religion, rabbis continued to debate the proper temple practices for centuries after the temple was destroyed under the assumption that it would soon be rebuilt. It is no surprise that christians, which at that point were a jewish sect, would do the same.

Acts leads up the climatic trial of Paul in Rome but doesn't cover it, which would seem to indicate that it was completed before his execution. And look here, and look there, at all these weird coincidences that only make sense if they were written in the 50s and 60s

You should re-read the last chapter of Acts:

Brothers, I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Roman government, even though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our ancestors. 18The Romans tried me and wanted to release me, because they found no cause for the death sentence. 19But when the Jewish leaders protested the decision, I felt it necessary to appeal to Caesar, even though I had no desire to press charges against my own people. (...) 30For the next two years, Paul lived in Rome at his own expense. He welcomed all who visited him, 31boldly proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. And no one tried to stop him.

Which proof do you think relies on actual infinity being logically contradictory?

All versions of the cosmological argument and all of the five ways of St. Thomas.

Cosmological argument does not require the universe to had had a beginning

Irrelevant.

That where one scholar is going but not where scholarship in general is going, that would be the other direction. And no eyewitnessess, whoever wrote the cleansing of the temple probably didn't even have a passing familiarity with the temple, for example.

Are you getting that from Ehrman or somewhere else?

Even with a "late" gMark date of 73ish, the author would have been in the temple as all male Jews were expected to travel to the Temple several times a year. Assuming the writer is older than 18, he would have familiarity with the Temple before its fall.

If you don't discount scholars just for being religious, arguments for early dating is becoming more acceptable. The arguments make sense. They made sense when critical historian Adolf von Harnack did the math in 1911, and they still make sense today. The historical investigation has the fatal flaw of needing to presuppose that nothing supernatural happened. If you approach without that presupposition, then the evidence points elsewhere.

consider how many times the authentic letters of Paul could have quoted Jesus from the gospels but didn't. That means they were written after.

I would not dispute that the letters of Paul were mostly written without the Gospels as reference. There are some parts of Paul's letters that have a certain rhyme with the Gospels, particularly in 1 Corinthians. But I think they were written separately, which isn't exactly a bad thing from an evidentiary-stand point. All that tells us is that the Gospels were not wide-spread reference material at the time Paul was writing and perhaps he did not have access to copies himself. He was an wandering preacher/tent maker. It's not the weirdest thing for him not to have had an extensive library.

It doesn't matter when the prediction was made, it's that predictions only become relevant after they become true, it wouldn't have been written about.

Or it mattered because it was a warning to the Christians to flee Jerusalem for the hills, which they did. And not all the predictions came true by AD 80. And some things that would probably be critical details embedded in their memory, like that the Temple was melted to SLAG wasn't mentioned at all.

You should re-read the last chapter of Acts

Yeah, and then Paul died. He died during Nero's reign, in AD 64/65. He arrived in Rome in AD 60. Acts ends saying, "He spent two years in Rome preaching." Then there is a gap of another couple years, and then Paul died. If Paul died before Acts was written, Luke would have included Paul's dramatic death. He did not, because Paul's dramatic death didn't happen for another two years.

Since gLuke is likely written before Acts, and Acts was likely written before AD 65, and gMark was written before gLuke unless you're crazy, gMark is older than AD 65. Give them each a couple years to write each book, and gMark is in the late 50s. Paul's letters were written in the 50s and the part of the 60s where he was alive, which goes to your point that he didn't have a copy of a Gospel to reference. It's all very nice and neat like the truth tends to be.

All versions of the cosmological argument and all of the five ways of St. Thomas.

No they don't. This is just silly. If for the sake of argument we allowed that there could be an infinitely long hierarchical series— D actualized by C, which is in turn actualized by B, which is in turn actualized by A, and so on in infinity, there would still have to be a source of causal power outside the series to impart causal power to the whole. Consider a mirror which reflects the image of a face present in another mirror, which in turn reflects the image of a face present in another, and so on ad infinitum. Even if we allowed that there could be such a series of mirrors, there would still have to be something outside this infinite series— the face itself—which could impart the content of the image without having to derive it. What there could not be is only mirror images and never any actual face.

The argument does not rely on the non-existence of actual infinity.

I'll grant you that an extremely early copy of gMark is very possible, but I don't think the same is true for Luke-Acts because of the details and purpose of those books. Luke-Acts is interesting because we can cross reference it with several other sources mainly Josephus and Paul to validate it's accuracy. And Luke gets several things wrong that we would expect an eyewitness and companion of Paul to get right. The most basic one being Paul's travel itinerary after his vision which Paul directly tells us about in Galatians. Additionally the author of Luke-Acts knows the Gospels as gLuke is one of the synoptics and essentially no one would say gLuke is the Earliest. It's an extremely tight timeline for the author of gLuke to be introduced to gMark or proto gMathew, after Paul has been sent to Rome but before his execution and as Paul was able to receive visitors and letter in Rome as stated in Acts and confirmed by Romans, it seems unlikely Paul would also not be introduced to one of these volumes.

The author of Luke-Acts is trying to ground his volume in history and does his best to set the the scene but when we look at Josephus there are some contradicting details. I think this enough to prove the author of gLuke wasn't basing his historical knowledge on Josephus but rather a shared understanding of the history being distorted by time. There a lot of hazy details and names that pop up in Acts especially the earlier part which indicate a half remembered history. This could be before Luke met with Paul and so the details are hazy but a lot of it directly concerns Paul and seems it would better match up with Paul's accounts of his exploits if Luke was his traveling companion. When I double checked some thing to write this post I found an intriguing book which argues both are true New Light on Luke by Barbara Shellard;

I shall take it as a working hypothesis for the following study, which accords with the admittedly scanty evidence, that Luke-Acts was written c. 100 CE, probably at Rome, even though the final revision of Acts may have been prevented by the death of the author, who would by then have been in his late sixties, and who was perhaps attached to the fringes of the Pauline mission in his youth...

An interesting hypothesis and I'm definitely going to check it out. But even if the "We documents" are much older and perhaps even first person accounts. I think the bulk of the work as enough correctable errors of an eye witness and contemporary of Paul that it's extremely unlikely to be contemporary. For example Acts criteria for apostleship excludes Paul, and as we can see in his letters Paul emphatically argued that he was an apostle. This seems unlikely for a follower of Paul to omit or write.

If so why does the author leave off the execution of Paul? Well for one gMark leaves out half of the resurrection so ancient authors are not obligated to write texts in a way we would expect. But also think of the audience of Luke-Acts, in my view Luke-Acts was intended for a Roman audience explaining how Christianity went from Judea to them by way of Paul. A big part of it is explaining why their Christianity came from Paul and not one of the apostles, and this is for a Roman audience. Luke-Acts overall is extremely deferential to Rome. The enemies in the book are usually unnamed mobs or Jews. Occasionally the local authorities hassle him but he's almost always able to get out of it by appealing to his Roman citizenship. And he has long friendly dialogues with the Roman rulers of Judea again in comparison to "the Jews" It doesn't stretch the imagination to see why an author appealing to an audience of Romans might end the narrative of Paul triumphantly preaching in Rome rather than his execution. As well as why the author of a sporadically persecuted movement might shave off inconvenient details the Roman authorities wouldn't like and would comfort parishioners. If we assume a post Jewish revolt date as well distancing themselves from the Jews might not seem a bad idea as well and a significant theme in Acts is Paul appealing to the Roman civil authorities against Jewish mobs. Him then being executed by Caesar ruins this narrative.

We can also see from the other Gospels that the author of Luke-Acts was perfectly comfortable editing out or omitting uncomfortable details. He has gone to great lengths to minimize the role of Jesus' family multiple mentions of his brothers and mother in gMark are removed or made non-specific. The narrative in Acts around the Jerusalem council gets incredibly weird and jerky because despite talking about the Church in Jerusalem he has neglected to mention James (the brother of the Lord) until now but can't get around his role in the council so has to add him in. He's working with known facts but weaving a narrative out of them. I actually think that Acts belongs more in the Romance genre ala Pseudo-Clement and I don't think this would be a controversial opinion among believing or secular scholars if it hadn't been canonized it's contradictions with Paul's letters and parallelism between Paul and Jesus would be enough to put it there, if it had been found in a cash of documents in the desert instead of all our Bibles.

Why then is it in all out Bibles? Well I think Acts serves a very useful purpose in Christianity narrative wise but particularly towards a Roman audience, and that is answering how did Christianity come to me?

If we assume an early date than Acts is attempting to chronicle "the story of Christianity up until now" and I just don't think it does that. We can see from Paul's letters that there was a lot of grappling with heresies differing interpretations and that a significant portion of his work was trying to keep early church's on the straight and narrow as he saw it. Even towards the end of his life in Philippians where we see these issues have not been solved and in Philippians especially he comes off rather bitter at points. All of that is omitted in Acts an Christianity is presented as a unified triumphal force with Paul going from town to town in the Roman gaining converts and ending with him preaching in the Empire's capital. This is very much a story of how Paul and Jesus triumphed. Paul's opponents are rarely heretics they are magicians and Jews. And the work of Luke-Acts but especially Acts again and again separates Christians from Jews and features the Roman authorities saving Paul from the Jews and learnedly listening to Paul's teaching on Christianity. Early differences are papered over and instead of denouncements, the have a council where they Holy Spirit moves them and the faith emerges stronger than ever! Which likely did happen to some degree but Philippians shows us it wasn't nearly as wholly agreed upon as portrayed in Acts. Acts works very well as a story of how did Christianity come to me a Roman citizen (or rather my grandfather) and why did it come from this Paul guy and it works very poorly as an exhaustive history of the early church which is not what it is trying to be, which is why I don't think an early date works at all for Luke-Acts.

More comments

But wait, didn't we enlightened Americans figure out a way for multiple people with a plurality of different ideologies and religions to live together in peace and harmony without society collapsing?

Good posts (both this and the previous one), but I just had to say that this bit in particular has amazing Jojo "to be continued" energy, lol.

Good points I've actually defended the traditional church hierarchy many times by appealing to this kind of argument.

I suppose I just get fed up sometimes with how uhh well frankly foolish and disconnected much of the church hierarchy seems to me. Not claiming they are, just that I have difficulty understanding their motives. This goes for Catholic and Orthodox and Anglican, btw.

You do make good points though!

That's kind of a different matter. Yes, they're bumbling idiots, but they're my bumbling idiots!

I suspect most people talking about a return to traditionalism are, as @2rafa has (perhaps uncharitably) opined on before, simply LARPers.

It's not clear what you mean by traditionalism here. Do you mean the bells and whistles of e.g. traditional Christian religion? Tradcaths going to latin mass? Or do you mean eschewing modern ways of life, like the Amish? Because both those kinds of people exist.

More sensible to me would be the idea of traditionalism as a set of values, I can at least imagine you think it's not possible to really believe, say, that society should be paternalistic, because we're so inculcated with Western society's propaganda. But you haven't made this claim explicit, or provided any evidence for it. I would in fact argue the opposite, that paternalistic societies are on the rise - see most of the 'right-leaning' countries e.g. Hungary or Poland, as well as autocratic ones like Russia and China - and that far from LARPing, people including these retvrners are actively seeking and finding different ways of organizing society that are competing with the liberals/progressives.

I also disagree with your idea that we should argue people into traditional values. Most people don't respond to arguments like you apparently did. What they respond to is seeing a better way of living. "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

In addition though, I simply think that modern liberty is good. I'm a sort of reluctant conservative I'll admit, but even in the traditional conservative picture of the world, I think that personal freedoms from the state and even to a certain extent within traditional communities are great. To me, the project of the conservative in the modern world is not to sort of force us via governmental apparatus back into some halycon pre-modernity days. Instead, the conservative impulse should be focused towards explaining and convincing people in a deep and genuine way that living in a more traditional way is better for society, and better for people in particular.

This whole thing is based on assumptions I don't think retvrners share.

Not least that liberalism is a debate of values managed by a neutral-ish state (as opposed to an imperialistic one that takes sides and actively destroys social arrangements it doesn't agree with). That there is such a a thing as unproblematic or fixed visions of "modern liberty" (the current version must be unrecognizable to many past liberals) and so on.

If you don't agree with those assumptions all of this is at best naive and at worst a cover.

There's no fair debate when one side has the swords.

Great post.

The current "best" choice for our young adults from their perspective is the continued liberalism and juvenilization of our society. They're not having to make the same sacrifices, and I understand why, but our society has now been forced to cater to 30 year old juveniles with their juvenile emotional maturity. Video game bars everywhere, bars that are pet friendly, Disney adults, etc. It's bars with games fucking everywhere. Go over to reddit and look at the popularity of subreddits like /r/malelivingspace. A lot of the places are cool looking, but as you would expect they're all clean bachelor pads and/or studios that look like a one man LAN party room. Single men with cool apartments isn't a crime. It's just the romanticization of that lifestyle that's really hard to overlook when the alternative, at least on the surface, is a way more "unnecessary" sacrifice. The dating market is a disaster: the freedom, control, and lack of accountability that society has given to women when it comes to sex, makes modern courting feel like you're walking through a minefield, blindfolded. It's all mostly high risk/low reward tradeoffs. To top it off, a large portion of guys this age have been exposed to porn and many prefer that over the real thing. One can easily understand why having a cool apartment and a terabyte of the porn you like, and being on your own schedule is a "better" option. There's no grief or jealousy that you'll almost certainly have to deal with if you have a young attractive girlfriend. It's an easy choice with consequences that don't directly present themselves until decades after the point of no return.

I wonder about the feasibility of getting people to behave in a more self-sacrificing way without forcing them to do it. My first thought (and something that had drastically impacted my own life) is for people to have and raise children. It's like bootcamp for adulthood. I knew that it would be difficult, but I didn't know in what ways it would be. The amount of daily sacrifice made by my wife and I is something I couldn't have possibly understood by someone trying to explain it, and I think this applies to so many of the things that we try to convey to people through our words and that simply cannot compare when it comes to lived experiences. Having an infant you're raising and protecting grow into a little person before your eyes is a truly wonderful experience. I've posted here before that my kids are not biologically mine, and that we adopted them after them being the foster system. One we picked up directly from the NICU as an infant. When that child was almost 1, I took a picture of them while they were on a swing, and the picture that appeared on my phone just shook me in a way that nothing else ever has. I have deep questions about god and religion, but the way that baby looked at me through that image was the closest thing to a religious experience I have ever felt. It was like God was looking at me through those eyes. So, there is all the sacrifice that comes with this life choice, and it's rough at times, but there is something on the backend of it that cannot be put into words and therefore cannot be argued to the intelligent (often leftist) Westerner who only believes in what is materially achievable.

I don't know how you marry modern living and religion on a broader scale, but the kid trick seems like the most tried and true process. I'd like to hear others, including @TitaniumButterfly's take on the potential of molding these two seemingly incompatible lifestyles into something that might be more workable. Obviously, any "taking away" of rights will bring out the wailing banshees, but even their "argument" about rights is starting to bring consequences to light that people have warned about for ages.

Exactly what is wrong with bars with videogames in them, as opposed to normal bars with no videogames in them? Are parents not allowed to go to bars? Or is the presence of video games too childish for your tastes?

Pool tables and darts are standard fare in bars, so why is the presence of "video"games verboten?

It's an example of consumption-based adulthood vs. sacrifice-based adulthood. Video games are historically associated with childhood, darts and pool are associated with adult social space. So when the nightlife scene revolves around nostalgia and video games, it represents the shift in the meaning of adulthood from the maturity of mingling to playtime escapism.

So your objection is on the basis of association? Changes in technology and entertainment are irrelevant, because those changes are associated with youth, and therefore inextricably linked with nostalgia and childhood escapism? That does not seem rigorous or rational. Your reasoning implies that there can be no innovation/changes in entertainment, as long as those changes are associated with childhood. Obviously new technologies/innovations are going to be mostly adopted by the young. So naturally, those parents/young adults who grew up playing video games, will want to also play videogames when they "mingle".

There is no logical, objective reason why videogames are meaningfully different from darts or pool; both are activities that can be enjoyed socially. Besides, it's not like parents in pre-21s century were austere and joyless; they engaged in song, dance and play. It is a fact that what is expected of parents today is much higher than what was expected of parents in the past. Implying that parenthood is all about sacrifice is one of the reasons why child-rearing and starting a family is unpopular right now. Parenthood and familial life should complete an individual, not shackle them.

I fail to see the deep connection between darts and sacrifice, or the reason for why bashing out a few Mortal Kombat matches with the boys can't be considered mingling the way pool is.

"Video games are for children -> but what about them gaining popularity with adults -> then the adults are childish" is circular. I suggest you find something other than surface aesthetics to classify entertainment as childish vs. mature.

What about the surface connection? Can you see surface connection?

Self-sacrifice, I think, is born in part of the realization that nothing important is sacrificed.

If people believe the “self” is paramount, they will sacrifice everything at that altar. That’s a pretty tidy modus ponens. Reality is that the self is nothing but a heat haze. It comes, and it passes. There are other things more enduring. Duty, for instance. Then it’s easy to do things that are hard.

The other day, my father said to me: “I don’t really feel pain as deeply as other people. I think it’s because, in my youth, I had a few times when I was in really intense pain, and couldn’t do anything about it. So, I suppose, my body learned it wasn’t anything life-threatening. So it doesn’t bother me any more.” So too threats to the “self.” One lives through them. But enforcing it, I think, may just make it worse. Simply support them. Show the fruits of another life, and they may be persuaded.

Thanks for commenting. That subreddit is wild. Shrines erected to fantasy and sci-fi worlds by young men. Really shows what we worship as a society!

I would love to have kids and have heard similar things from other people. Good on you for adopting.

I do agree that it's easy to sell cheap freedom, I just hope that we are able to persuade folks it's in their best interest not to choose such options. Unfortunately it seems to be the default in our current culture.

I'm with you that having kids can lead to responsibility, in the right circumstances (i.e. where the people involved have the right mentality about it). But I also know a young couple where the woman had a baby with the man (his second) in order to lock him down and maybe grow him up, but he has remained a deadbeat and has also convinced her to quit her own career. They now live in her grandmother's basement and don't pay rent. So I would caution about a blanket recommendation to have kids early - it should be applied to those who are already ideologically and mentally prepared, and those kinds of people will likely be okay with or without the kids.

regard for the mystery of the human person

And where did that come from? Oh, go back to the Enlightenment? And where did the Enlightenment happen? Why aren't we all living under the global Chinese idea of the dignity of the individual? The pan-African philosophy of the personhood of the human being?

This is fish not recognising the existence of water. All those lovely liberal values didn't precipitate out of the air, they were build on a foundation that goes back to those "late ancient (or medieval) metaphysics and morals and social structures" about "love your enemy", "who is my neighbour?" and the likes.

I think my main gripe with the retvrners is that there's a poorly defended (IMO) assumption that the good times of the second half of the 20th century were an unstable position, merely a breather at the top of a slippery slope. Maybe it's because I'm a pure product of it, but I don't find the ideals of that era hard to defend without slipping into postmodern madness. I think those ideals have been betrayed, they didn't fail on their own terms.

They were on the slippery slope, just, uh not at the top. Neither were the fifties.

1850's?

Hm?

He's asking you what time period was at the top of the slippery slope.

Then how did Muslims conquere the UK?

Ok, maybe I advanced past the sell there. But hang with me.

This whole post is basically defeatism. Declaring as psychologically, culturally and metaphysically impossible any sort of return to tradition. "Liberalism" has destroyed the old ways so thoroughly and completely, and habituated everyone against them so innately, that even attempting to go back is just LARPing.

Then how do you explain Islam in Europe? How were they not just swallowed up by the overculture of liberalism they migrated into? How did they not end up as islands of backwards LARPers constantly getting worn away by the relentless tide of liberalism against their shores?

Go back further, how did Islam reclaim the entire region? How did it turn Lebenon, "Paris of the Middle East", a model of a secular liberal society in the heart of the Middle East, back into an Islamic stronghold, with it's own Islamic paramilitary?

There are examples near and far that this model of "Liberal Supremacy", where no other sincere modes of thought are even possible in the face of the overwhelming dominance of liberalism are clearly shown to be false everywhere you look around the globe. I begin to suspect this whole line of thought is just another demoralization psyop.

They have by no means conquered the UK, as evidenced by the healthy and explosive pushback that has occurred recently. Besides that, they have been "liberalized" in a way. They smoke, they drink, and they fuck before marriage. They steal, rob and rape. They present as ultra-conservatives, and then engage in the most degenerate shit. Effectively, they've been converted into the homogenous globalized underclass, which Liberalism creates. Their present dysfunction is proof of Liberalism's power.

Lebanon's Islamisation occurred due to an influx of Palestinian refugee's, sectarian infighting, and a much larger state sponsoring said Islamic paramilitary. And besides, Lebanon was by no means a secular Liberal Society. The Lebanese Christian, Suni, and Shia, themselves, not the Sunni Palestinians, engaged in all manner of war crimes; these groups did not believe in Liberalism as you understand it. In the Middle East, ethnic and religious conflict is usually solved by appeals to overriding authoritarian nationalism, not by principled Liberalism. When that authoritarian nationalism falls apart, as in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, then sectarian conflict occurs.

Hezbollah was not a genuine Lebanese reaction towards Liberalism. It was a foreign paramilitary force, funded, armed and supported by Syria and Iran, that took advantage of the Lebanese state's weakness; it was never indigenous to Lebanon, or had a broad base of support. In fact, due to Israel's war, they've been neutered as an effective force in Lebanon, so ironically, they are an example of Liberalism (or whatever the fuck Israel is) triumphing over Islam.

Part of it seems to be an insane blindspot amidst the Left with underdog fetishism where it's gauche to consider what the current underdogs actually believe and how they'd hypothetically behave if handed the reins of power.

Maybe it's follow-on from the 'Left social values are simply correct and will naturally win over the foreigners if given a chance' kinda mindset but there's unspoken assumption of human cultural fungibility that leads to the whole 'Muslim Democrat Local Leaders cancel Pride Week' headline that's cropping up fairly frequently now. Even most Left thinking on Israel v Palestine seems to be of the 'Israel are currently being mean but if they stopped the situation would instantly resolve into kumbayah'

Britain is sending cops at God knows how many people for their tweets but we're supposed to draw the twin conclusions that:

  1. The state is just neutrally defending "liberty"
  2. The current status quo is unassailable.

how did Muslims conquere the UK?

Canada is a great model to understand this dynamic. Despite being 2% of the population, Sikhs have outsized influence on Canadian political discourse.

If a group is transactional, ghettoized and votes together, then it can single handed swing elections in a divided nation. If 2% of the population can swing elections, then imagine what 7% Muslims can achieve in a significantly more divided nation.

A few factors put UK in a worse position than Canada or Europe.

  1. UK whites are more divided than European whites. Divided majority = powerful minority.
  2. Britain (and anglo countries in general) struggles to integrate immigrants into the culture, because Anglo culture is generally under-defined. Having exported its values globally, there is little it can claim exclusive ownership of. Suffering from success. In contrast, the French convert immigrants into french people first and foremost.
  3. Worse Muslims. Not all Muslims are created equal. UK's Muslims are ultra conservative Pahadis (from Pakistan) and rural Bangladeshis. These groups were ghettoized and under-integrated in their already conservative home countries. Integrating them into UK, is like playing on hard mode. Germany's Turks and France's north-Africans are much easier to deal with. Sweden has been dealt a similarly bad hand, and we can already see how that's going.
  4. Bad economy. The UK has been going downhill since the global financial crisis. Countries on the up have good optics. The US does this well. Because the American dream pays off, all sorts of misaligned cultures buy into the American dream. Winning is contagious. The UK ain't winning.

Part of the reason the US assimilates well is that the ‘red’ inscrutable cultural package lifestyle is very appealing to working people the world over- bbq, pickups, guns, etc. The UK doesn’t have any equivalent for non-elites.

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