Enjoying the view from Limbo
Keir Starmer, the latest in a string of mealy-mouthed and/or self-aggrandizing party men to occupy 10 Downing Street in the shadow of a giant whom they all knew before entering the place that they could never live up to, has decided, in true socialist fashion, to wear his insecurity on his sleeve more overtly than his predecessors. Specifically, Starmer has chosen to remove...
I have occasionally been asked over the years why I chose Limbo as the defining theme of this website. It seems quite self-evident to me, because the notion of Limbo — and I take my notes on this concept primarily from Dante Alighieri — encapsulates so much about me, on so many levels. I belong among the in-between people: the unsaved who are...
Ideas and Reflections / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published August 26, 2024 · Last modified August 27, 2024
Alexander Vindman, a small man who played a significant role in an isolated moment, but who has been trying to parlay that momentary significance into a more general relevance ever since, has taken to the social media monster called X — where the clowns gather — to “warn” Elon Musk, who runs X, that the recent French arrest of Musk’s counterpart at Telegram...
In a little over two months, the identity of the next President of the United States will be determined. I choose my words carefully. I say that the identity of the next president will be determined, not that it will be revealed. To be fair, there is a vague sense, which may be more a factor of one man’s marketing genius than of...
On social media.– I have never once wondered what Plato ate for lunch. Nor what Dante looked like on the beach, what Shakespeare gave his children for their birthdays, where Vivaldi spent his summer vacation, or which card game Swift played with Stella. Yet our world is now awash in the lunches, beach pictures, birthday parties, vacation diaries, and personal hobbies of a...
A few notes on the Democratic National Convention, a political event I would be even less likely to watch than a Republican National Convention. At least this year’s RNC (of which I watched a total of about one minute) involved some intrigue concerning how the party was going to frame itself so as to hold the wide range of voters it needs in...
by Daren Jonescu · Published August 20, 2024 · Last modified September 15, 2024
A constant, regular ticking. — A world obsessed with time, schedules, and above all precision, will inevitably suffer the peculiar effect of reducing all life and all awareness to the vectors of temporality, namely an ever-growing dread of running out of time. For most people today, this fear — usually unacknowledged, even outright denied, but always palpable — is increasingly causing a kind...
“Say things as simply as possible” — in order to be understood as widely as possible. “Live in accordance with the norms of your society” — in order to be accepted. “Do not do what will be seen as inappropriate, foolish, or out of step by the people around you” — lest one be rejected or even condemned by others. “Keep up with...
All of us are born in a cave, Socrates teaches (Republic VII), staring at shadows cast upon the back wall by images held in front of a fire behind us. From this starting point, he explains that education is the process of turning around in our chairs to see the fire, the objects dancing before it, and the men holding those objects, and...
A serious student whose enthusiasm for classic literature decidedly tends toward Jane Austen and Plato — toward a reality in which life’s dark shadows eventually give way to the bright sunlight of understanding, or at least to the enlightening glow of irony — wrote to me to express her frustration at being unable to find the greatness in Dostoevsky, in spite of having...
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