Enjoying the view from Limbo
This past weekend, Donald Trump made what our minute-by-minute age calls “history” by becoming the first U.S. president to attend a Super Bowl game. In other words, true to form, Trump was the first president in American history crass enough to think it appropriate to turn even his country’s most popular annual apolitical entertainment event into a divisive and hyper-political photo opportunity for...
Elon Musk, as I have previously discussed here, has been widely accused of giving a Nazi salute to his fellow Trump supporters, said accusation consisting in an object lesson in establishing a truth by dint of endless repetition of a blatant lie. For the video clip of the supposed neo-Nazi outrage is readily available for all to see, although I am quite sure...
Modernity is hell-bent on proving what would be without need of proof if we still experienced life as humans. Case in point: it wants to demonstrate through experimentation that mortality gives life its purpose, its interest, and its reason to carry on. People before the age of science used to intuit this simply by recognizing that they were going to die, feeling afraid…
My country, wrong.— There are broadly two ways to criticize one’s own country. The first is to despise what it was and is, and desire its replacement with something else. The second is to despise what it has become — that is, what it has been replaced with — and lament the loss of what it was or ought to have been. I...
In the eternal battle between cats and birds, I am always on the side of the birds. Make no mistake, though: I know the battle is eternal, which is to say that it is both essential and without hope of ultimate resolution or victory. I have chosen my side nevertheless, or rather perhaps I ought to say that I have been chosen by...
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 26, 2024 · Last modified April 27, 2024
Socrates, in The Republic, defines the five essential forms of government in rank order, from most to least just: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny. His cleverest rhetorical trick, the most famous (and probably least understood) conceit in the dialogue, is his redefinition of aristocracy by means of the radical proposal that in order to realize a truly just city in practice, philosophers would...
We spend a lot of time (which is itself an illusion) hemming and hawing with mock-profundity about what we are going to do, as though we were making decisions, rather than merely waiting to do what we must do. We must either flow with the wave in which we inevitably find ourselves, or struggle to remain standing and resistant against its force. But...
It is typical these days, among those still sufficiently sentient and resistant to ideological indoctrination to have wayward thoughts, to wish others a Merry Christmas with a disclaimer to the effect that Christmases, at this historical moment, do not seem to offer much to be merry about. While I certainly sympathize with that mixed tone of well-wishing lamentation, I always try to remind...
For the thinking individual, the paradox of writing or speaking for public consumption is that the moment you realize you have been “discovered,” which is to say that you have found some kind of audience, you will be tempted every hour by the devil who has devoured the soul of almost everyone who has ever been in this position. Why are people of...
Global Climate Hysteria / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 31, 2023 · Last modified August 1, 2023
A few days ago, I returned to the issue of climate alarmism, using as my kick-off point the predictable public and media response to the recent unusually severe rainy season in Korea, where I live. As I noted then, it was all but impossible here, for a few wet weeks, to mention the rain in any context without being met immediately by a...
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