Enjoying the view from Limbo
The president of the United States told The New York Times within the past few days, with perfect equanimity and matter-of-factness, that his authority and decisions with regard to foreign policy, up to and including any threats and military engagements against America’s allies, are limited only by “my own morality, my own mind.” This may provide reassurance, or more likely rapture, to his...
In fact pleasures and pains are the things with which moral virtue is concerned. For pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions. Hence the importance, as Plato points out, of having been definitely trained from childhood to like and dislike the proper things; this is what good education means. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.iii,...
Rule of thumb.— Authority should never be in the hands of those who want it. The principle of decentralization.– The level of authority one human being has over another should be directly proportional to the level of personal interest and affection that defines their relationship. Hence, parents and other family elders ought to be the primary authorities in every child’s life, friends and...
Magnifying Lens.– Everything that is ugly, corrupt, degrading, demoralizing, and cheapening about modern life (or is it just human nature?) is deepened and broadened in a big city. My rough calculation, after a few recent visits to Seoul: For each million people added, the vices and ruptures in civil society that are intrinsic to city life are multiplied in severity ten times. More...
The human ego is a clever, skulking beast, always ready with a scheme to protect itself against the humiliations inherent in so much of human life, specifically by artfully reframing these humiliations as acts of will, and ascribing causality to what is in truth only an inescapable effect, distorted by imagination. Necessity is the mother of invention, and few needs are greater in...
That cynical men will exploit a human problem for their own petty advantage, without concern for ultimate outcomes beyond their own immediate gain, is obvious. This cynicism explains most of what is called “foreign policy,” most of what is called “medicine,” most of what is called “education,” most of what is called “entertainment,” and most of what is called “lawmaking.” But none of...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 10, 2022 · Last modified April 22, 2022
On being “absolutely modern.”— We naturally get excited about new ideas, new explanations. In such excitement, all past ideas seem paltry and passé. Such is the nature of enthusiasm. The whole world reflects our excitement back at us, reinforcing the illusion of absolute certainty attending the compelling new thoughts and their accompanying feelings. Hence, all previous modes of thought appear to us as...
If you knew that someone in your circle of acquaintances had once said or done something, whether in jest, in anger, or in ignorance, that might be regarded as impolite or offensive in certain company, or even just objectionable to people of certain points of view, and further knew that if you highlighted that knowledge in public, you could — due to a...
According to progressive morality, which is really progressive politics, to disagree with or disrespect someone’s choices and attitudes — provided they are the correct choices and attitudes of the moment — is to violate his rights. This is tantamount to saying that rights are essentially protections against being judged. To judge a person’s preferences (in relativist lingo, his “lifestyle”) is thus inherently to...
Everything that makes life worth living is something we do not have. That is how it makes life worth living. If we had it, there would be no reason to continue. This means that desire is the source of everything meaningful in our lives. The voices of the modern world shout at us every day, from every rooftop, that we should “live for our...
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