Enjoying the view from Limbo
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published June 4, 2023
The challenge in teaching Plato’s Apology used to be overcoming the students’ incredulity and incomprehension faced with historical fact of a supposedly democratic society rejecting the philosophic activity so stridently as to put a man’s freedom and his very life on trial, merely for asking questions that the political establishment did not like. “How unjust and intolerant the Athenian people must have been!”...
The modern materialist insists he is right because his explanations obviously work. In this case, “to work” entails (and more than just incidentally) sucking all the sense of meaning out of human life as such. But to say that something works is to assume a specific goal in accordance with which “working” may be judged. Materialism works, therefore, if one’s goals are unrelated...
We are all supposed to defend the idea of democracy today as though our lives depended on it. In fact, anyone who fails to do so, or who dares to ask questions such as whether this democracy we are all bound to defend amounts to anything in practice but the blunt force of absolute majority rule, is condemned or ridiculed as an enemy...
Losing an audience, with all that this entails, is a window into the personal meaning of death. From feeling deeply associated with, or embedded within, one’s human surroundings and their processes, one undergoes a gradual and involuntary detachment. Slowly, one perceives one’s increasing ineffectualness in a world where one had once perceived oneself as a cause of movement and an object of others’...
When you encounter a theoretical or artistic work that has been highly regarded by advanced societies since before you were born, perhaps even before your great-great-grandparents were born, the reasonable point of view is to assume that the work must have some sort of merit, perhaps even greatness, that justifies its longevity and enduring admiration. This is not to say that you must...
Special counsel John Durham has completed a four-year investigation into the FBI’s aggressive pursuit of Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia prior to the 2016 U.S. election. He has concluded that the FBI gave in to confirmation bias in claiming links between Trump and the Kremlin, treating unsubstantiated private reports as trustworthy evidence, and leaping from legitimate concerns about Trump associates (e.g., Paul...
Two climbers in different fields can understand and respect one another, and perhaps even be friends — with a wink. Two climbers in the same field can understand and respect one another, and may even appear to like one another, albeit with a slight sneer. But to the climber, nothing is more offensive, more viscerally disruptive, than the presence of a non-climber within...
Books / Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published May 10, 2023 · Last modified May 12, 2023
One of the more overt and disquieting symptoms of the English-speaking world’s sleepy descent into totalitarian self-obliteration, aka “social democracy,” is the recent trend in the publishing world towards the shameless raping of famous works of literature in the name of rendering them more inclusive (read relativistic and propagandistic), by revising their content — i.e., changing the words and ideas bequeathed to us...
Anyone can exert himself on the good days. One who does only that will become a middling being, at most. For greatness lies largely in the ability to exert oneself on the bad days. To get out of bed when hiding under the sheets and wishing it all away is the only attractive option. To look them in the eye when you would...
In this era of popular psychological pseudoscience, which systematically mistakes context for causality, it is common to hear laments about men who beat their wives “because” their fathers beat their mothers, or children with drug-addicted parents who “inevitably” succumb to the habit themselves. It is certainly true that context, particularly intimate human context, influences character development and the relative visibility of available options,...
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