Ask Nathan Anything: Quarantine Edition

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ever watch this YouTube channel? What's your opinion of it?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCct9aR7HC79Cv2g-9oDOTLw

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If I were approaching Canada as a cultural critic I'd observe:

1. that the Canadian self-stereotype of decency and politeness is really a national myth along much the same lines as "entrepreneurship" in the US; it's a way of asserting moral superiority for what's fundamentally a country much like any other in the developed world
2. that the series of views that Americans call "social liberalism" being as culturally hegemonic in Canada as it is, seems to be causing deep simmering resentments by circumscribing public discourse.

I wouldn't commit to either of those criticisms because I'm not Canadian, but those are the criticisms I would make.

There is some truth to #1, though on average I'd say Canadians use the brain God gave them more, are more decent and more polite. We have plenty of people that don't fit that description though.

I'm referring less to Canadian manners or habits, which I agree with you are by and large exemplary (far better than the passive-aggression that passes for "good manners" in much of the US), and more to the way this affects a lot of Canadians' sense of the country itself as a moral actor--which I've seen extend to uncritical attitudes towards Canada's awful energy policy, fraught history with its First Nations communities, etc. I'm not accusing you of any of that but it's a cognitive bias I've noticed among a lot of center-to-center-right Canadians I've known.

#2 is very accurate IMO, to which our non-silent majority would say to the far-right Canadians, "womp womp".

See, framings like this (anybody not fully on board with assisted suicide or Bill C-16 or whatever as ipso facto "far-right") strike me as really unhelpful. But I say this as somebody who regularly throws around the term "far-right" when it comes to my own country's politics (mostly on material rather than culture war issues), so take that for what it's worth.

Ever watch this YouTube channel? What's your opinion of it?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCct9aR7HC79Cv2g-9oDOTLw

I wasn't familiar with it until just now, no! A quick look through some of its video titles makes me think it's probably doing some really good work, although there's also some clickbaity "we've been had, maaaaan" Da Vinci Code-type stuff that I assume is there to get metaphorical butts in metaphorical seats to watch the more substantive ones.

[T'Chenka]

If I were approaching Canada as a cultural critic I'd observe:

1. that the Canadian self-stereotype of decency and politeness is really a national myth along much the same lines as "entrepreneurship" in the US; it's a way of asserting moral superiority for what's fundamentally a country much like any other in the developed world
2. that the series of views that Americans call "social liberalism" being as culturally hegemonic in Canada as it is, seems to be causing deep simmering resentments by circumscribing public discourse.

I wouldn't commit to either of those criticisms because I'm not Canadian, but those are the criticisms I would make.

There is some truth to #1, though on average I'd say Canadians use the brain God gave them more, are more decent and more polite. We have plenty of people that don't fit that description though.

I'm referring less to Canadian manners or habits, which I agree with you are by and large exemplary (far better than the passive-aggression that passes for "good manners" in much of the US), and more to the way this affects a lot of Canadians' sense of the country itself as a moral actor--which I've seen extend to uncritical attitudes towards Canada's awful energy policy, fraught history with its First Nations communities, etc. I'm not accusing you of any of that but it's a cognitive bias I've noticed among a lot of center-to-center-right Canadians I've known.

This is true, mostly though because Canadians don't know enough about our own policies and lawmakers. We focus on US politics more, oddly. If the public paid closer attention, IMO attitudes would shift.

#2 is very accurate IMO, to which our non-silent majority would say to the far-right Canadians, "womp womp".

See, framings like this (anybody not fully on board with assisted suicide or Bill C-16 or whatever as ipso facto "far-right") strike me as really unhelpful. But I say this as somebody who regularly throws around the term "far-right" when it comes to my own country's politics (mostly on material rather than culture war issues), so take that for what it's worth.

There are way fewer politics nerds who dive deep in Canada I think, at least in terms of Canadian politics. MAs I mentioned, many pay closer attention to USA politics than our own.  I think a lot of people don't have a firm position on assisted suicide and don't know about Bill C-16. I was just referring to regressives thst want to repeal our gun laws, LGBTQ acceptance and environmental protections.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If I were approaching Canada as a cultural critic I'd observe:

1. that the Canadian self-stereotype of decency and politeness is really a national myth along much the same lines as "entrepreneurship" in the US; it's a way of asserting moral superiority for what's fundamentally a country much like any other in the developed world
2. that the series of views that Americans call "social liberalism" being as culturally hegemonic in Canada as it is, seems to be causing deep simmering resentments by circumscribing public discourse.

I wouldn't commit to either of those criticisms because I'm not Canadian, but those are the criticisms I would make.

There is some truth to #1, though on average I'd say Canadians use the brain God gave them more, are more decent and more polite. We have plenty of people that don't fit that description though.

I'm referring less to Canadian manners or habits, which I agree with you are by and large exemplary (far better than the passive-aggression that passes for "good manners" in much of the US), and more to the way this affects a lot of Canadians' sense of the country itself as a moral actor--which I've seen extend to uncritical attitudes towards Canada's awful energy policy, fraught history with its First Nations communities, etc. I'm not accusing you of any of that but it's a cognitive bias I've noticed among a lot of center-to-center-right Canadians I've known.

This is true, mostly though because Canadians don't know enough about our own policies and lawmakers. We focus on US politics more, oddly. If the public paid closer attention, IMO attitudes would shift.

That's good to know; I definitely think Canada seems like a society that wants to pursue racial reconciliation and environmentally sounder ways of living, which is more than can be said for most sectors of American society.

#2 is very accurate IMO, to which our non-silent majority would say to the far-right Canadians, "womp womp".

See, framings like this (anybody not fully on board with assisted suicide or Bill C-16 or whatever as ipso facto "far-right") strike me as really unhelpful. But I say this as somebody who regularly throws around the term "far-right" when it comes to my own country's politics (mostly on material rather than culture war issues), so take that for what it's worth.

There are way fewer politics nerds who dive deep in Canada I think, at least in terms of Canadian politics. MAs I mentioned, many pay closer attention to USA politics than our own.  I think a lot of people don't have a firm position on assisted suicide and don't know about Bill C-16. I was just referring to regressives thst want to repeal our gun laws, LGBTQ acceptance and environmental protections.

Yeah, that makes sense. I might be looking at Canadian politics through an American, and possibly specifically American Catholic, prism for what constitutes "a social issue".

[Antonio the Sixth]

So, I just had this warm-ish take in another thread:

What I don't like is the idea of the Fall, that humanity was morally perfect once and made the conscious choice to leave that state. I've always hated golden age myths in all their variations (including those that are popular on the left, like Rousseau's state of nature). There's something deeply perverse about the idea that the advent of human history was a tragic event that should never have happened. It is to reactionary thinking what Fukuyama's "end of history" is to progressive thinking: an attempt to reject the immanence of history and to somehow bind it, either at the front or tail end. In both cases, I view the political ramifications of these attitudes with extreme suspicion.

I'm very interested in your thoughts on the subject, because I know you are emotionally attached to the idea of the Fall (as opposed to just grudgingly accepting it as something you as an orthodox Catholic have to believe in, which I obviously wouldn't take issue with) and generally view history in a tragic light (I know that you're fond of Walter Benjamin's Ninth Thesis, for example).

So I guess my questions are: do you agree with my characterization of golden age myths as attempts to reject history, and is that why the idea of the Fall appeals to you? If so, what, emotionally and intellectually, leads you to this attitude toward history? And how does it inform your moral and political attitudes? Is undoing or reversing the unfolding of history something you aspire to, if purely on a theoretical level?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Utterly shameless copying of my most recent questions for Cath in his AMA thread.


___


1. What, in your view, is the most underappreciated issue that affects countries throughout post-Soviet Central Asia?

2. How do you interpret the rise of politicized conservative-to-fundamentalist religion throughout much of the world since, say, the 1970s? I have my own interpretation, and it is very much related to the decline and eventual disintegration of the USSR, but I think it played out differently in different countries and on different continents - even though there are some eerie parallels (but not exact duplicates, of course).

3. Where do you see the Catholic Church by 2030? Interpret this question as you wish.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I know this isn't particularly relevant to because you are no longer Protestant, but can you foresee any positive sign of growth for mainline churches in the future or do you believe that they will continue their rapid decline?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Also, what are your views on Distributism and why do you think it never materialized as a mainstream ideology?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

1. What, in your view, is the most underappreciated issue that affects countries throughout post-Soviet Central Asia?

Climate change. Obviously it's an extremely well-known and high-profile issue in general, but its effects on Central Asia in particular are understated, partially because Central Asia was the site of another perhaps even more dramatic and infuriating environmental disaster (the literal destruction of the Aral Sea) that sucks up most people's emotional energy. But especially for pastoral peoples in Central Asia, changes to weather patterns and in particular snowfall patterns are disastrous. People who rely on livestock are starving, or being forced to move to some of the most polluted cities in the world.

2. How do you interpret the rise of politicized conservative-to-fundamentalist religion throughout much of the world since, say, the 1970s? I have my own interpretation, and it is very much related to the decline and eventual disintegration of the USSR, but I think it played out differently in different countries and on different continents - even though there are some eerie parallels (but not exact duplicates, of course).

I think it first became prominent in the United States due to, yes, late-Cold War posturing and triumphalism, and then started to spread abroad because of the US's short-lived hyperpower status. I can't cite sources for this but I read somewhere once that the spread of Evangelicalism to Latin America began life as a Nixon/Ford-era deliberate policy of ratf**king the region's by-then-relatively-left-leaning Catholic institutions, and if that's true, evidently it's worked.

3. Where do you see the Catholic Church by 2030? Interpret this question as you wish.

We'll probably be well into the pontificate of Pope Francis's successor by then, possibly even towards the end of it; there hasn't been a Pope under the age of 75 since John Paul II celebrated that birthday in 1995, and Francis's appointments to the College of Cardinals really don't make it seem like the commitment to gerontocracy is being reduced. There's a lot of attention paid in developed-world Catholic circles to the possibility (probability, I'd say) that Francis's successor will be a lot less tolerant/lenient than him on what Americans recognize as "muh social issues", but I don't think that's because there'll be some sort of backlash against him at the next conclave; I think it'll just be because of Third Worldism and a continued pivot to parts of the world where even most women are suspicious of contraception and histrionics about "gender ideology" are a winning political message. In some ways I think this will be healthier for the Church in the long run than continued domination by Western European "city father" types; when we say we want a Church that's "of the poor and with the poor", we need to accept that, on the worldwide level, "the poor" tend to be...well, just not very punk rock. I definitely don't see the Napa Institute, Acton Institute, National Review, "my problem with this flash-in-the-pan radtrad political party is that it doesn't support trickle-down economics" style of "conservative Catholicism" succeeding in taking over the Church, mostly because (with the arguable exception of the mid-period of JP2's pontificate, but only the mid-period and only arguable) the magisterium has never catered to those people and by this point they're mostly consulting sources of moral and epistemic authority other than the Church's actual leadership anyway.

I know this isn't particularly relevant to because you are no longer Protestant, but can you foresee any positive sign of growth for mainline churches in the future or do you believe that they will continue their rapid decline?

I think they'll hit rock bottom at some point. Most of the mainline denominations are far too integrated into "highbrow" American life to ever outright disappear. I think progressive mainline Protestantism as you and I recognize it is in serious danger of becoming a somewhat crankish boutique religiosity, though, and I'm not any happier about that than you are, because après moi, le déluge.

Also, what are your views on Distributism and why do you think it never materialized as a mainstream ideology?

I've been called a distributist. I wouldn't classify myself that way, otherwise I'd probably have an orange avatar rather than a maroon one, but I'm definitely sympathetic to what the economic system it advocates is trying to do. "Capitalism produces too few capitalists, not too many" has been a winning message before, just not connected to the mostly-theological specifics of distributist thinking. Part of that is because it's so specifically Catholic--in ways that capitalism is not specifically Protestant whatever the likes of Max Weber might say--and part of it is because it's a romantic, nostalgic ideology that's just not focused on the necessary work of redeeming the era of mass production and cheap plastic crap. You can't have artisanal smartphones handcrafted on a family farm with three acres and a cow.

Antonio, I'll get to your question soon!

[Kingpoleon]

Have you read Hayy ibn Yaqzhan? If so, what did you think of it?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Have you read Hayy ibn Yaqzhan? If so, what did you think of it?

I haven't, unfortunately. But I've heard of it and I think it looks super interesting.

[Elcaspar]

What your opinion on Georgism? Also thoughts on why it lost the popularity it had during the late 19th and early 20th century and became less well known today?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What your opinion on Georgism? Also thoughts on why it lost the popularity it had during the late 19th and early 20th century and became less well known today?

I don't know a ton about the specifics of Georgism, although I like the ~aesthetic~ of it. My guess is that it's lost prominence just because land is less valuable (relative to capital and labor) than it was during and shortly after George's lifetime. Somebody interested in carrying forward the general concept of Georgism in the late-capitalist age could do a lot worse than to adopt a progressive and redistributionary understanding of the purpose of state and local property taxes. This is an understanding that I hold and a position that I strongly support myself, so you could say I'm a bit of a neo-Georgist in that sense at least.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So, I just had this warm-ish take in another thread:

What I don't like is the idea of the Fall, that humanity was morally perfect once and made the conscious choice to leave that state. I've always hated golden age myths in all their variations (including those that are popular on the left, like Rousseau's state of nature). There's something deeply perverse about the idea that the advent of human history was a tragic event that should never have happened. It is to reactionary thinking what Fukuyama's "end of history" is to progressive thinking: an attempt to reject the immanence of history and to somehow bind it, either at the front or tail end. In both cases, I view the political ramifications of these attitudes with extreme suspicion.

I'm very interested in your thoughts on the subject, because I know you are emotionally attached to the idea of the Fall (as opposed to just grudgingly accepting it as something you as an orthodox Catholic have to believe in, which I obviously wouldn't take issue with) and generally view history in a tragic light (I know that you're fond of Walter Benjamin's Ninth Thesis, for example).

So I guess my questions are: do you agree with my characterization of golden age myths as attempts to reject history, and is that why the idea of the Fall appeals to you? If so, what, emotionally and intellectually, leads you to this attitude toward history? And how does it inform your moral and political attitudes? Is undoing or reversing the unfolding of history something you aspire to, if purely on a theoretical level?

The short answer, which I've already communicated to you privately since you asked this question, is that I believe in a strong enough version of Hume's fork that thinking that a golden age myth correctly describes reality doesn't force me into the position of thinking that that myth is an acceptable basis for political action.

I don't think the story of the Fall is an attempt to "reject" history at all. It necessitates an unpleasant view of the nature of history, yes, but an unpleasant view isn't the same thing as a nihilistic one or even an impoverished one. I'm fond of that Terayama quote about the past as our first and ultimate "lost home"; Terayama connects this with a dislike for history, but I don't, because I have a nostalgic and ruminating personality. "Undoing or reversing the unfolding of history" isn't something I aspire to at all because it's impossible; if I could wave a magic wand and put humanity back in Eden I probably would, but I can't so instead I prefer to focus on attempting to improve humanity's lot going forward. (I can't put my finger on why I think this, but I think the Dickinson verse "Rowing in Eden/Ah, the sea!/Might I but moor/Tonight in thee" is relevant here, as is the Tolkienian "long defeat" concept that I've talked to you about numerous times before and that provided the inspiration for two of my previous display names.)

So far in this answer I've mentioned Terayama Shūji, Emily Dickinson, and J.R.R. Tolkien. All of these are primarily literary rather than political or even theological figures, because I approach history, even the history of politics and of religion, in a fundamentally literary way. Narrative, genre, and "motif" are how I've been trained (both academically and autodidactically) to think about the world in general, so I interpret the Fall as (while being a real event) having more abstract and symbolic implications for what kind of "story" history is, rather than as a catastrophe that demands a program for somehow "reversing" it. That would be immanentizing the eschaton, and I'm at least temperamentally conservative enough to have a deep suspicion of any ideology or plan of action that attempts or purports to do that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

To follow up on your excellent answer, allow me to be a little more narrow about my point of contention.

I certainly don't mean to claim that belief in the Fall or other golden age myths necessarily entails a political program for reversing history and returning humanity to its original state. I do realize that that's not what the vast majority of Christian doctrines advocate (and, to be fair, neither did Rousseau). My final question might have muddied the waters, but I really did intend to ask it in the most abstract and theoretical sense. I was interested in whether the idea of reversing or undoing history appeals to you emotionally (in the same way in which, say, the Human Instrumentality Project appeals to me emotionally) rather than as a call to action. So, would you say it does appeal to you emotionally?

So, my claim that the story of the Fall represents a rejection of history is in the sense that it treats history as something that ought not to have happened. I don't think the strongest version of Hume's fork can possibly separate religious parables from their normative implications - I'm convinced that you'd agree with me on that. From my understanding, Biblical exegesis interprets the Fall as humanity exercising its free will in a way that undermined God's plan for it (if there are authoritative perspectives that view the Fall as part of God's plan, I'd be fascinated to hear about them, but they raise many questions of their own). This entails viewing history as not just a tragedy, but an avoidable tragedy (since it hinges on human free will), something that shouldn't have happened and could have been stopped. Is this a fair characterization? Is it a reading that you personally embrace? And if so, again, what do you think leads you to embracing it?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Nathaniel, last night, in a bout of insomnia, I believe I thought of a fantastic question for this thread. That said, all form or direction of it has been lost to my memory except something having to do with the intersection of politics and Lord of the Rings. So I guess I'll ask: what, if any, political takeaways can we get from Tolkein's epic trilogy?

(in the same way in which, say, the Human Instrumentality Project appeals to me emotionally)

Not the thread for it, but I never got anything close to a coherent enough piece of political or social theory from NGE to say what the HIP was beyond some weird mind meld (which I would of course be opposed to). This is in part because the last few episodes have one preferring to look at their phone rather than the screen, though I will admit I have not seen the movies.

[Antonio the Sixth]

(in the same way in which, say, the Human Instrumentality Project appeals to me emotionally)

Not the thread for it, but I never got anything close to a coherent enough piece of political or social theory from NGE to say what the HIP was beyond some weird mind meld (which I would of course be opposed to). This is in part because the last few episodes have one preferring to look at their phone rather than the screen, though I will admit I have not seen the movies.

Feel free to ask in my AMA (not that I'm an expert or anything, again it's more of an emotional yearning than anything concrete).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

To follow up on your excellent answer, allow me to be a little more narrow about my point of contention.

I certainly don't mean to claim that belief in the Fall or other golden age myths necessarily entails a political program for reversing history and returning humanity to its original state. I do realize that that's not what the vast majority of Christian doctrines advocate (and, to be fair, neither did Rousseau). My final question might have muddied the waters, but I really did intend to ask it in the most abstract and theoretical sense. I was interested in whether the idea of reversing or undoing history appeals to you emotionally (in the same way in which, say, the Human Instrumentality Project appeals to me emotionally) rather than as a call to action. So, would you say it does appeal to you emotionally?

So, my claim that the story of the Fall represents a rejection of history is in the sense that it treats history as something that ought not to have happened. I don't think the strongest version of Hume's fork can possibly separate religious parables from their normative implications - I'm convinced that you'd agree with me on that. From my understanding, Biblical exegesis interprets the Fall as humanity exercising its free will in a way that undermined God's plan for it (if there are authoritative perspectives that view the Fall as part of God's plan, I'd be fascinated to hear about them, but they raise many questions of their own). This entails viewing history as not just a tragedy, but an avoidable tragedy (since it hinges on human free will), something that shouldn't have happened and could have been stopped. Is this a fair characterization? Is it a reading that you personally embrace? And if so, again, what do you think leads you to embracing it?

These questions rely on at least three premises, two of which I'm going to challenge.

1. "History", as such, would not have been possible if not for the Fall.
2. The Fall should have been prevented if possible.
3. Since the Fall wasn't prevented, that means that all subsequent history is a mistake that ought not to have happened.

The only one of these premises I'm at all willing to concede is the second one; if you're presented with a situation in which you can avoid committing a sin or stop somebody else from committing a sin, you should of course do so. But that has little to do with whether or not the trajectory of consequences of that sin is some sort of horrible mistake. God can bring good out of evil just as the forces of evil can bring evil out of good.

The first of these premises I reject out of hand. The fact that the actually-existing course of history is a depressing and in some ways, yes, very tragic slog, doesn't mean that every possible history would have been the same way. I don't think it's at all the case that growth and change, and thus history, would have been impossible in an unfallen state. I'll concede that the assumption that they would have been is pretty deeply ingrained in the way most people emotionally understand what an unfallen state would have been like, myself included, but that doesn't mean that it's inherent in the concept. An artist or writer or actor who starts great and keeps getting better with every new work is undergrowing growth and change, and a history of their career could easily be written, despite the fact that nothing is going badly. So too with the idea of a history of an unfallen humanity. So even if we believe that the course that history has actually taken is a mistake that oughtn't have happened, there's no reason why we need to believe that about history as such.

The third premise is dubious too. It's definitely how a lot of Christian theologians and historians today understand the Fall, but in fact the idea that any stage of history was a completely unmitigated disaster denies the omnipotence and omniscience of God and is an incredibly serious heresy; the fact that it's a heresy associated with political reactionaries, rather than the liberal "cafeteria Christians" on whom self-ordained orthodoxy police prefer to focus, doesn't change this. None of the great Doctors of the Western Church would have tolerated the suggestion that what gets called "salvation history" is "an avoidable tragedy that shouldn't have happened and could have been stopped". So eager were they to avoid even the implication of this that they formulated the idea of the felix culpa or "fortunate fall", which is the idea that the Fall, while a bad thing in itself, worked out for the best in the end because it paved the way for the salvation and glorification of humanity through the lives and afterlives of Jesus and Mary. The Wikipedia article for "felix culpa" insinuates that it's an unorthodox idea but this is not so; Ambrose, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas (writing implicitly against Anselm, whom I know is something of a philosophical hobgoblin for both of us) all advanced the notion, and it was directly articulated in the liturgy for the Easter Vigil right up until 1970, even after the Council of Trent instituted a New Order of the Mass (yes, I went there) in the sixteenth century. (I checked an immediately pre-Vatican II missal I own, publication date 1961, and yes, it's still there.) (ETA: I checked the USCCB website and it's there in the Pauline Mass too; I just didn't remember because I wasn't able go to the Easter Vigil this year.) Magisterial Protestant liturgies don't tend to include this bit, but the concept isn't absent in Protestantism; it appears in Paradise Lost, a work that has a much more hopeful and upbeat ending than its reputation suggests.

What the idea is, is paradoxical; of course the Fall "should have been prevented", but equally obviously, the history that came after the Fall should not have been, and was God's design. This is probably why modern theologians, who have a worrying tendency to be aesthetic, historical, and narrative ignoramuses, are uncomfortable with the concept; they view paradox as indicative of inconsistency or insincerity, rather than of mystery.

You could, perhaps, think of unfallen and fallen-but-redeemed humanity as the two women who appear at the top of Mount Purgatory in the Divine Comedy. Matilda, as Voltaire (or Leonard Bernstein) might put it, "builds her house and chops her wood and makes her garden grow", whereas Beatrice is tomboyish, judgmental, and all the more brash and confident for having suffered and died and been exalted. Both are admirable figures, but, well, anybody with even the slightest familiarity with Western literature knows which one is presented as the ideal woman.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I've been called a distributist. I wouldn't classify myself that way, otherwise I'd probably have an orange avatar rather than a maroon one, but I'm definitely sympathetic to what the economic system it advocates is trying to do. "Capitalism produces too few capitalists, not too many" has been a winning message before, just not connected to the mostly-theological specifics of distributist thinking. Part of that is because it's so specifically Catholic--in ways that capitalism is not specifically Protestant whatever the likes of Max Weber might say--and part of it is because it's a romantic, nostalgic ideology that's just not focused on the necessary work of redeeming the era of mass production and cheap plastic crap. You can't have artisanal smartphones handcrafted on a family farm with three acres and a cow.

Antonio, I'll get to your question soon!

Curious to hear you expand on this. I've always liked The Protestant Ethic (if only as a criticism of historical materialism) and I'd love to hear you expand on it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nathaniel, last night, in a bout of insomnia, I believe I thought of a fantastic question for this thread. That said, all form or direction of it has been lost to my memory except something having to do with the intersection of politics and Lord of the Rings. So I guess I'll ask: what, if any, political takeaways can we get from Tolkein's epic trilogy?

I don't think Lord of the Rings is an especially political text, although it definitely touches on politics-adjacent subjects like historiography and questions of legitimacy (on the latter of which it's of course relentlessly small-c conservative, as exemplified in the Meiji Restoration-esque titular "return of the king"). It definitely has an anti-authoritarian message, and a "small is beautiful" critique of "big" combines (big government, big business, etc.) generally. That; the effusive love for the natural environment; and the fact that pipeweed appears to be a slightly stronger depressant than tobacco is, probably account for most of the hippie love for the story. It can also of course be read in terms of a critique of Whiggery, which it has in common not only with the works of the other Inklings but with much of the British fantasy tradition going back to the Victorians and even continuing forward to today. (Even Michael Moorcock with all his criticism of Tolkien and Lewis is not an "onward and upward" Enlightenment Now type.)

I've been called a distributist. I wouldn't classify myself that way, otherwise I'd probably have an orange avatar rather than a maroon one, but I'm definitely sympathetic to what the economic system it advocates is trying to do. "Capitalism produces too few capitalists, not too many" has been a winning message before, just not connected to the mostly-theological specifics of distributist thinking. Part of that is because it's so specifically Catholic--in ways that capitalism is not specifically Protestant whatever the likes of Max Weber might say--and part of it is because it's a romantic, nostalgic ideology that's just not focused on the necessary work of redeeming the era of mass production and cheap plastic crap. You can't have artisanal smartphones handcrafted on a family farm with three acres and a cow.

Antonio, I'll get to your question soon!

Curious to hear you expand on this. I've always liked The Protestant Ethic (if only as a criticism of historical materialism) and I'd love to hear you expand on it.

I like The Protestant Ethic too. I just don't think--and, on further consideration, I doubt Weber thought--that only Protestant societies were capable of developing the "spirit of capitalism". Some of the most successfully and rapaciously capitalist societies in the world today have either Muslim or Buddhist-Confucian religious underpinnings. With distributism, on the other hand, I find it hard to imagine any non-Catholic society ever really warming up to it. (I'd love to be proven wrong, though!)

[Elcaspar]

Opinion on the viability of a one-state solution as compared to a two state solution for Isreal/Palestine?

On a more lighthearted note, what book/books are you reading currently, if any?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Opinion on the viability of a one-state solution as compared to a two state solution for Isreal/Palestine?

A one-state solution is on paper both the only long-term viable solution and the only one with what I see as sound moral fundamentals. The practical problem with it--and it's a massive, potentially insurmountable one--is that the two main people groups that would be thrown together in a one-state solution are both dominated by political leaders and ideological trendsetters who want to commit ethnic cleansing against the other people group. Unless there's some sort of Northern Ireland-style power-sharing agreement enforced by some international body or hegemonic world power (probably the United States but who knows at this point), it'll turn into either a Ba'athist wonderland or a Kahanist wonderland the second either Arab parties or Jewish parties win a solid majority in the Knesset.

On a more lighthearted note, what book/books are you reading currently, if any?

I'm about midway through Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding by Mary C. Boys. It's excellent so far, except for the fact that its treatment of the actual life of Christ leans a little too heavily on shopworn "historical Jesus" truisms. It's really good and genuinely inspiring otherwise, though; I'm learning a lot about the actual positive alternatives to the historical "teaching of contempt" that are being discussed within Christianity and especially within Catholicism today. And I'm waiting for a copy of Dante's Vita Nuova that I ordered to arrive in the mail so I can read that too.

[The Mikado]

This isn't really a question, more of a statement, while you have some time due to Quarantine and stuff:

You would like Turn A Gundam (1999-2000) a lot. I get the impression you're not really a mecha person, but it's literally right up your alley. It's an absolutely lovely show.

Posting because yesterday I saw this:

https://twitter.com/feezy_feez/status/1259647396482437122

The covers of the Turn A novelizations. Gorgeous and surreal, just like the show itself.



(This is the cover of the first Blu Ray box)

Turn A was from 1999 and is the last hand-drawn Gundam series before computer animation completely took over, and is one of the most gorgeous hand-drawn series I've seen. Every episode looks like a movie rather than a serialized show. It marked Gundam's originator Yoshiyuki Tomino coming back to work on a series in that franchise for the first time in a decade and is him at the absolute height of his powers.

I think that you'd personally really click with this show. If you need a pitch, PM me. I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Got dammit, Mikado, stop turning everyone in this thread into weebs!

[The Mikado]

Got dammit, Mikado, stop turning everyone in this thread into weebs!

LOL. I can't help it. LOOK at that poster. Doesn't it just scream Nathan to you?