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Notes -
A Look into Hickman, wherein a Sensitive Young Man discovers the positional utility of money
Link the relevant tweet
I've written about Hickman before because I find him to be a very interesting character. This is a man who was purposefully homeless for years, a self-described constantly drunk anarchist, who then joined the coast guard to clean up his act, become a kind of hardcore catholic that doesn't quite fit neatly into the Online RadTrad mold, got married, had a kid, and now, apparently, self-supports via writing online. He's also something of budding real estate investor.
And although he still "hates money" he just can't deny that it's got some pretty nice features; like being able to live in good neighborhoods where your kids are safe as well as being able to choose the rough outline of your socio-political environment.
Hickman's journey isn't unique overall. It's definitely got a lot of color to it, of course. I see it, however, as a pretty normal process of becoming aware of second order social effects. As kids, we're inherently self-focused. Adolescence brings some awareness of things outside of ourself. Young adulthood continues that up to family formation. For most, however, it takes the actual having of children to ignite thoughts about the beliefs, behaviors, and opinions of larger groups of strangers.
Being 25 and single or dating means I have more or less complete control (or perceived control - memetic influence is for a different thread) over the ideas I let effect me. But a parent realizes that short of keeping their children locked up in the basement, their ability to totally control the kid's ideological intake is far from complete.
It's unremarkable to point out that what happens next is people use a combination of money and social organization to choose and maintain the ideological ecosystems within which their children live. Money can get you access to the right zip codes and/or private schools and clubs / sports. Social organization can get the right (wrong?) books banned from the public libraries, and the right (wrong?) drag queen story hour performers. Enter the ongoing culture war.
The interesting thing, to my mind, that Hickman's post illustrates is the reach of these topics. Hickman, although not living on the street anymore, is certainly on the fringe of "normal" society. He's a very-online yet pseudo Amish dirtbag Catholic who lives in dying upstate NY. Yet is talking in the same direction that leads to HOAs, school boards, zoning, planned communities and all the other things that are top of mind for the most milquetoast suburbanites. Short of a true EXIT mentality, you can't not be in the culture war.
And I think there's something useful here to contemplate in terms of the very Vibes based general feeling of anxiety that generates thousands of thinkpieces across main stream and alternative media and internet outlets. If many of us feel like non-voluntary conscripts in the culture war, it follows that we're fighting the war just to survive and get back home. But then the question becomes "what the hell is home?" There's no 40 acres and a Good Wife (TM) to walk with into the sunset. The HOA has problems with our lifestock and Wifey is at therapy and thinks we need to have a conversation about emotional labor. Or, for my progressive friends, the need to return that 40 acres to the indigenous rightful owners is really getting difficult because of the tax implications of the real estate sale and my polycule keeps breaking up while I'm talking to my lawyer.
Of course I'm having a little fun here, but the point stands; the political dream of the West post World War 2 was that a mix of economic and political liberality could ultimately result in an appreciable degree of autonomy for, at least, an individual if not a family. That no longer seems the case and there's been no real alternative identified. On the left, it's a kind of utopic socialism that can't ever actually work. On the right it's a very vibes based "RETVRN" ethos with some nihilstic streaks.
I've mostly found him boring and annoying. I actually did like him a bit at first when he was just talking about how he lived as a vagrant, but now he feels the need to state the obvious in a kind of preachy tone. He also likes to give advice to young men to move to the middle of nowhere so they can buy cheap houses and work at the general store down the street... just absolute drivel, in my opinion, and he's passing it off like he's actually saying something. So, if he's not some cool free spirit sleeping in a hammock in the trees, what is he, really? Not much. A LOLCOW, maybe, sometimes.
That might be accurate, but I don't think it follows. I don't want to go back home. I want to make my home in the future. The culture war will always exist, and I think the Conservatism INC's habit of perpetually trying to turn back the clock 10-50 years is a huge flaw in their character.
While I agree, the follow on statement of "Yes, but we need a future oriented conservatism" is actually a landmine. "Use what worked in the past, but adapt to the present / future" was the entire ethos behind small-l liberalism. And it led to psychotic progressivism. It's no wonder that the current conservative ethos is heavily reactionary.
My attempt to square the circle is; embrace certain unchanging eternal truths and do not let them slip or yield in the face of any kind of future. No surprise that I'm of the conservative / traditional catholic bent. But I'm also not Amish. In fact, I think a strategy for Conservatives (be they INC or wildcatters) should be an approach to technology in general as a means to re-introduce conservative ideas.
(Catholic aside: The Latin Mass movement doesn't exist without podcasts and other online spaces. Roll back the clock to 1975 - 2005 and the Latin Mass was close to dead outside of SSPX / FSSP / ICKSP. )
The Latin Mass growth post 2005 was not primarily driven by online spaces, it was driven by changes in canon law and existing IRL networks which later had a large online component mostly by tapping into the backlash to pope Francis and later to demand for covid-unconcerned Catholic networks. I was there for much of this and the incorporation of the online component was hugely controversial.
I'd like to hear more about your experience here.
That's fair, but I see this as validating my point with different timing. I'd also very plainly ask if there's a real sense within any Catholic circles - and there could be, this isn't meant to be a leading question - that the online Trad-Cath-o-sphere is, on net, detrimental?
In 2018-2019 there started being large contingents of extremely online young male converts. They didn't fit in very well. Pre-Pope Francis traditional Catholicism, as a movement, had no answer at all; the expectation was that men were in religious life, or else heads of families, with some minor allowance for twenty year olds that were still in college/working on being ready to marry providing that they were connected to an existing large traditionalist family. This was cliquish and unhealthy, but traditional Catholics are not immune to psychotic brainworms. The newcomers often rubbed the locals the wrong way, of course- several got yelled at for hitting on teenagers(in fairness, the teenaged girl/young woman distinction is, uh, not one rad trads are particularly insistent on in other contexts, and is probably not quite as obvious), they were often vulgar by local standards, many were motivated more by political conservatism than the classic motives for traditional Catholics- which are either completely sincere religious motivations, a genuine belief in large families(the average age in IRL rad trad communities is generally middle school, not middle aged... very high fertility rates are part of the program), or moral puritanism- and some didn't seem to realize that they are attempting to join a religion which prides itself on inventing the term 'dogma'. In 2020 this existing tension just kind of blew up into irrelevancy with the sudden influx of... everyone who didn't like their diocese's covid policy(and subsequent growth for the surviving latin masses after TC). The stereotypical tweed and pipesmoke image just generally took a while to integrate newcomers, and while the fourchan types were disproportionately blamed there was lots of frustrations with everyone else too.
The online trad-cath-o-sphere? What do you mean by that? Like Dr Taylor Marshall and lifesitenews have plenty of detractors on the basis of spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories and platforming churchbashing. Taylor Marshall is a nice enough guy in real life, of course, but lots of people who like him as a person and don't even particularly disagree with him would criticize his podcast as Not Helping. Tradcath twitter has the distinction between Nazis who don't believe any Catholic doctrine or go to mass but like the aesthetics and IRL rad trad twitter, both have their critics but the typical IRL rad trad literally doesn't know about the former- they think the complaint about awful rad trads on twitter is, like, the Dimond brothers, and complaints about 'traditional Catholicism as cover for racism' is just libs using their favorite R-word.
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