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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   41941 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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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!

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