Tagged: truth

Random Reflections On Being Here

The annoying thing about unrestrained government authority is that it does not magically become beneficial when it happens to fall into the hands of the faction you prefer. The insidious thing about unrestrained government authority is that it invariably appears to have become a beneficial thing when in the hands of the faction you prefer. Everything political leaders do is questionable, because only...

Politics In A Moment of Crisis

A few thoughts on the eve of “the most consequential election in U.S. history,” as it is being advertised. (Sorry, in order for an election to be that, the U.S. would have to be the constitutional republic it once was, and civilization in a dangerous but reversible condition, neither of which is the case.) To be clear, mind you, I have no further...

Free Speech Is For Weirdos Now

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...

The Soul and The City

It is always comforting to remind yourself, as you watch them seeking to tear down your world, that your world, at least as they understand it, is also their world, whatever they may believe. Hence, everything they take from you is a theft from themselves, everything of yours that they destroy is one more thing they can never have, and every sign of...

Reflections on Appearances

The French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said of a famous American director (I quote from ancient memory), “He points the camera somewhere, I suppose, but he doesn’t see anything.” Today, four billion would-be cinéma vérité auteurs are pointing their own cameras “somewhere,” as we may suppose, but the assumption that all this pointing and shooting constitutes seeing, or revealing, anything —...

Two Reflections: Art, Abnormality

The purpose of art is to reveal truth. Not facts, not slogans, not trendy attitudes, and certainly not the ephemeral feelings or passions of the artist himself. Truth, meaning something unchanging and essential to a proper understanding of some element of reality, whether regarding human nature, the structures of civil order, or the ordering principles of the cosmos. Anything, therefore, which purports to...

Writing for the Age: Three Questions

Should I try to write more comfortingly? But I am of a nature to find comfort only in reality, and indeed to find the greatest comfort there. The kind of comfort that masks what is immediately unappealing to face, or that simplifies what is inherently difficult to comprehend, is false comfort, and therefore the most dangerous obstacle to learning and freedom — that...

Reflections on Belief, Intelligence, and Evil

A thing is no more likely to be true because its truth would be very convenient. Conversely, a thing is no more likely to be false because its truth would be inconvenient. In general, truth and falsity have no intrinsic relation whatsoever to what would make things feel easier or more accommodating to you, in your conditions, with your associations, subject to your...

Activism, Progress, and Thought

A young man should speak only in the form of questions, at least in public, while issuing his opinionated outbursts in private, preferably alone. To be perfectly clear, this is not to say that he should form no opinions, but only that he should be discouraged in every possible way, including through a well-honed sense of secrecy, from expressing them to anyone, let...

Two Reflections On Knowledge and Ignorance

The honest answer.– If I knew the answer to all the world’s problems…would it make any difference? For in order for this answer to actually solve the world’s problems, the world would have to understand what the world’s problems were, and care about solving them. Furthermore, the world would have to pursue the answer to its problems in a relatively universal but also...