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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:
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:
Edit: ended up writing this into a more full Substack post, if anyone is interested.
Unfortunately, I think your is doing a lot of projecting.
When he (he?) says;
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).
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 trainingnovice 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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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