Back to the Stone Age I D 2: Progressive Regression
There is nothing irrational about accepting the moral, political, and cultural traditions that have been handed down to us as part of the conditions of life in the European-American world. Many of these traditions—washing before eating, respecting parents, working for a living—have been tried and tested for thousands of years, while the opposite—bad hygiene, filial disobedience, and welfare dependency--seem, after only a generation or two of experimentation, doomed to failure.
Some traditions, as Walter Burkert observed, go back to the Stone Age; others derive from our cultural ancestors, the Greeks and Romans; still others come from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Others are the gift of our mostly barbarian ancestors.
Much of our culture, while hearkening back to antiquity, has more recently taken on new forms. Classical music, representational oil painting, familiar literary forms like the novel and the sonnet, and the rational enquiries of science, are among the great products of the past five or six centuries. Palaeoconservatives, while neither deaf nor blind to the possibly great art being produced in our own time, respect the art and literature handed down to us from our ancestors, partly because we have learned to recognize their greatness and partly because we know that in every generation the greatest human accomplishments are an extension of an age-old tradition. If we reject the genius of Aristotle or the wisdom of Shakespeare or the beauty of Haydn, we are showing contempt for our ancestors. These aesthetic revolutionaries who put Homer and Vergil on the same level as Mayan pictographs (or even lower) are violating the principle that underlies the commandment to honor our father and mother.
"But," some progressive usually objects, "all the old precepts, forms, and styles have been rendered obsolete by…" You can fill in the blank with any word used to preface "Revolution": The Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, the Sexual Revolution, the Computer Revolution, and now the genetic revolution." My friend George Gilder once actually opined that the computer chip had enabled humanity to transcend the limitations of human nature. Today we are just as likely to hear that the iPhone or Twitter had done even more.
Nietzsche, I think in Zarathustra, saw a great deal of this before it happened, and he observed that if a lame man mounted a horse and rode to the top of a mountain, would still, once he dismounted, limp. All these liberating revolutions have the effect of enslaving us to the revolutionary state or the revolutionary technology. We think, because we can look things up on Wikipedia, that we actually know something, when in fact we do not even know how to find anything out. Just see how empowered the modern proletariat is, when the electricity fails at Best Buy or the Apple Store. You cannot buy anything, because they cannot add up the bill, much less figure tax without a computerized cash register. Knowledge consists of what you have in your head when the lights go out or you are on a desert island, in the woods, or lying at death's door in a hospital bed.
When I cannot sleep, I go over irregular verbs in Italian or Serbian or ancient Greek, and, when that trick fails, I run over the Roman emperors. I sometimes recite longish poems, like Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," or Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" or the beginning of the Iliad. Entering old age, I am going back to the poets. I fear my children and grandchildren will have nothing but jingles and claptrap to alleviate the insomnia some of them will have inherited from me.
Surface are always changing, almost always for the worse, but the deep structures of human nature stay the same. As big-brained apes, we still long for life in a small tribe or village, still long to be admired, loved or feared, by or fellow, still crave the material immortality of our descendants, still seek satisfaction in mastering a skill. Because there is so little outlet for our natural impulses, we settle for the third-best alternatives offered by commercial culture. Instead of acquiring technical skill in making and throwing spears, we become a whizz at video games or spend money on watching strangers throw a football. Instead of going to the fire to hear the village story teller or singer recount the deeds of our ancestors, we the History Channel or, worse, attend the annual professional storytellers festival where people play pretend at belonging to a traditional culture. Instead of finding a mate and begetting children and grandchildren who will honor us, we try to score as many orgasms with strangers as we can, and if we go have children, we content ourselves with a trip to Disney World or Two Flags Over Fuquay.
Circumstances change, but the realities of human life do not. It is Marxists, not conservatives, who believe that human nature is a function of circumstances that man is free to change. Progress is at the center of the revolutionary creed, while the very word "conservative" suggests resistance to change and skepticism of the whole idea of progress. The arch-conservative Metternich once said that a reactionary is reluctant to change the year of his calendar, but after several centuries of dogged conservative rejection of progress, the mystical theory of ceaseless change and infinite perfectibility is now one of the few beliefs shared by people who call themselves conservatives.
Even incorrigible optimists should have understood that American conservatism had been replaced by an evil double, when every movement hack began to enthuse over Robert Pinkerton's "new paradigm," which was only the old paradigm of democratic socialism with an overlay of the even older gush about opportunity.
One inevitable consequence of this is that in embracing progress and liberation, conservatives almost must adopt the progressive frame of mind in which life consists of problems crying out for solutions. Solutions always mean more government programs, and government programs inevitably mean a cancerous growth of political power that eats away at the authority of natural and legitimate institutions of kinship and community.
The bitter truth is that for most so-called human problems—immorality, unhappiness, selfishness—the only solution is the common fate of mankind, namely death. One of James Burnham's wisest insights is that if there is no solution, there is no problem. The poor, we are assured by the highest authority, was shall always have with us, but we shall also always have adulterers and cuckolds, conmen and dupes, masters and slaves. Equip the slave with an iPad, a Facebook account, and a government make-work job teaching school or minding other people's business, and he is still a slave, only a less happy slave.
In liberating humanity from the need work and in striking off the shackles of tradition, the revolutionary left has so degraded men and women that there is no community or body of traditional institutions where they can find refuge. For some number of people able and willing to make the effort, there is a long and hard (albeit enjoyable) road out of the ghetto, and that is to embrace the life of the mind, whether as a profession or as an alternative to the servile entertainments of the mass media. We need to distinguish, however, the essential food and drink of our Western traditions from the exotic fare of alien traditions.
Some palaeoconservative intellectuals are scientists; others are experts in Asian or Middle Eastern literary and intellectual traditions; but all understand the primacy that must be accorded the artistic, literary, and intellectual traditions of the European Christian West. Far from deriding or denigrating other great traditions, we salute them, as we ought to, and if we have time and curiosity we may devote our lives to studying them. We understand, however, that the basic need of a humane education, from the age of five to the age of 21, is not to acquire a lot of quaint and curious lore about other cultures, but to be instructed in the fundamentals of our own civilization. That is why we emphasize the necessity of a classical education and the study of the Christian religion.
If the term "conservative" means anything, that meaning must include a sense of humility about one's own generation and a respect for the accumulated wisdom of dozens of generations. Conservatives are fond of quoting the proverb that we are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. It is usually attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, who for all his genius and eccentricities, knew how much he owed to the past, but Newton was himself quoting John of Salisbury, a Medieval philosopher who explicitly claims to have got it from the twelfth century Platonist, Bernard of Chartres. Progressives, by contrast, are so myopic that, when they look down at the giants on whom they rest, see only a confused blur which they mistake for a jumbled troop of dwarfs.
Entries(RSS)
In liberating humanity from the need work and in striking off the shackles of tradition, the revolutionary left has so degraded men and women that there is no community or body of traditional institutions where they can find refuge. For some number of people able and willing to make the effort, there is a long and hard (albeit enjoyable) road out of the ghetto, and that is to embrace the life of the mind, whether as a profession or as an alternative to the servile entertainments of the mass media. We need to distinguish, however, the essential food and drink of our Western traditions from the exotic fare of alien traditions.
I really love these lines. Many bloodlines will it seems be cut off in the coming twenty years or so, as you hinted in your opening paragraph. The few that survive will be either those hailing from the islets that have escaped the total degradation of community or those who manage to pull themselves "out of the ghetto," as you say.
Nick,
I agree. Dr. Fleming writes well and can sing too. I hope after this series of reflections on his becoming a stranger in his own country is published, he will put a collection of poems together before his last Ash Wednesday.
We're now living in a buffet of culture, tasting a little from here, a little more from there. We are thrilled at the exotic, the new sensations that such sampling introduce to our palates. And we pride ourselves on our worldliness, our cosmopolitanism. You can still find the old familiar, traditional, and homely cuisine on the other side of the line, but that's so retro - move on! We're just sooooooo bored with our civilization!
The truth is, we're so shallow now as a people, we don't even understand what it is we're rejecting. Worse yet, we have the arrogance to think we are more enlightened than our stupid, provincial forebears!
AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!
"The truth is, we're so shallow now as a people, we don't even understand what it is we're rejecting. Worse yet, we have the arrogance to think we are more enlightened than our stupid, provincial forebears!"
Mr. Smith,
I quite agree and I am sometimes embarrassed to see this truth repeated more often among the old, old, "progressives" than today's conservatives. Some oligarchs are really good, upstanding citizens and I admire them in many ways especially the more Southern variety such as T. Boone Pickens.Yet, even when you combine their good character with Yankeedom, you get something much worse than a mob. Wendell Berry tried to describe some manifestations of the arrogance in an old article I have misplaced or thrown away. You might try and look for it. Thanks as always for the good posts.
The Progressive, April 2002
THE PREJUDICE AGAINST COUNTRY PEOPLE
by Wendell Berry
PREJUDICE AGAINST COUNTRY PEOPLE
A family member snickered at a cousin of mine who was engaged to the daughter of a hog farmer. I told this family member that I had a lot of respect for hog farmers: I eat pork at least five or six times a week!
The flip side is that while I have a great deal of sympathy for the rural folk - how would I eat without them?? - it is true that "poor" and "rabble" are increasingly synonymous across the Western world. Until recently, this was more the case in urban areas, but there is undeniable and horrific spectacle of "trailer trash" and out-of-wedlock births (no other factor correlates so well with poverty or criminality than this latter) among those with low incomes or little material patrimony.
There is also the tendency among many Americans to disdain refinement and education as signs of effeminacy, socialism and anti-Americanism. It is of course wrong to project all the modern woes of the country into the rural past, but no one these days really does his ancestors justice. In any case, it is increasingly difficult and lonely to live a "poor" yet "dignified" existence.
Nick,
Well as they say in the country, duh!! When you take poor people's education away from them, their religion from them, their children from them, their wives from them, and their livelihoods from them, what else to do besides deal in trailers, trash, and ferrel living like the hogs you describe?
"There is also the tendency among many Americans to disdain refinement and education as signs of effeminacy, socialism and anti-Americanism."
Again this is the normal reaction to the abnormal situation --- most college professors are not refined but in fact are effeminate --- except for many of their women colleagues. And most, or at least a significant majority, are socialists and most of them could be said to hate their country or at least the parents and grandparents of the students they have been hired to teach. Don't be afraid of reality,Nick, it is the proper nourishment for a man's soul.
My friend Navrozov likes to invert Talulah Bankhead's bon mot and say, "I've been rich and I've been poor, and, believe me, poor is better." Although I think he may be oversimplifying a bit, on balance he is right, at least in this time of the world. Wealth should give an opportunity to cultivate one's higher tastes and contemplate the good, but these days it is more likely to reduce you to the level of the beasts that are tended by the husband of Nicholas' cousin. I know lots of rich people, some extremely wealthy, and I would not trade my own material circumstances for theirs if it meant I had to lead their sort of lives. Whether money is inherited or gained by effort, it is a burden. Nicholas seems to be suggesting that with more money, we could lead a more refined life. Too bad this is not true of the rich, who waste their energies buying stuff, taking courses on wine-bibbing, getting invitations to smart parties, arranging photo layouts of the villa they acquired.
While it is certainly true that America's great unwashed are unreflective resentful boors, I prefer them to the rich boors who don't have a clue about how to live. The poor man roots for the home team whose games he watches on TV but he may also go out to his children's high school games. He is far more likely to have a drop of common sense and to appreciate the importance of his wife and children.
Grinding poverty is at least as degrading as great wealth, but none of us is likely to have to face either challenge. It is not at all difficult these days to lead a poor but dignified existence, provided we do not define poor as "indigent" and dignified as "refined." Why live in Paris, when France is filled with small towns of great charm. Give up all the toys and gizmos created by the Gateses and Jobses. Strip down to what really matters. In the words of one particularly loony Yankee, "Simplify, Simplify!"
I need to revive the poems series, perhaps with translations of Horace's wise and temperate Epicurean admonitions. The message might be reduced to the level of an ancient beer commercial: "You only go around once in life." Naturally, the brewery meant you should buy his product, but I drew the conclusion that the brevity of life encourages us to make the most of this world, while we can. This means we must either get married or fulfill a clerical vocation. Have children, if we can. Spend some time grappling with nature, read the best books, avoid commercial junk, spend time with friends. I came across a poem the other day which I shall post.
I've come to see money not so much as a pathway to easy living as a shield to defend my family. While having too much is definitely a burden and a temptation, not having enough leaves one quite literally defenseless. If you don't have enough money, you can't homeschool but must use the public reeducation camps which you pay for anyway with tax dollars (the parochial camps, of which I'm a graduate, aren't that much better but at least I don't have to pay for them unless I use them). You can't buy a gun (or two or three). You can't buy a car and have to take public transportation which, in some places, is becoming increasingly more dangerous. You can't feed your family decent, non-processed foods. Without enough money, both spouses have to work and the kids wind up in God forsaken day cares. Or you have to work two jobs at the sacrifice of spending time instructing the kids on the important things in life like Faith, Virtue, and Fishing. If you don't have enough money you have to raise the kids in increasingly hostile suburban neighborhoods or, even more difficult, in apartment complexes. Don't get me wrong, it's not the cramped nature of the domicile I object to (I've lived in both) - it's the people that surround you. It's busted beer bottles on the front lawn and in the parks, it's gangs of idiot teens roving about at nights, it's foolish girls sunbathing in bikinis in their front yards right in front of my children, it's neaderthal neighbors letting their dogs deficate right next to the swing set, it's the nosy neighbor calling a social worker to see if you might have thought about spanking one of your children, it's window-rattling bass at 2 in the morning, it's 3 to 4 illegial alien families parking their 10 cars in the street right in front of your house and leaving a toilet bowl on their front lawn . . .etc., etc., etc.
I do not mean to pass any judgment on any person who is stuck in any of these situations (most of the above obviously comes from my own personal experience). I am just trying to point out that money gives you the choice/chance to get away from some or all of these situations.
I am by no means rich, but I am thankful that I had enough to get out into the country apace where I can do what I can to raise my children in relative safety and sanity. I'll risk the copperheads in the woods over most humans in the suburbs. The only goals I have to amassing any more money is to shore up my defenses wherever possible and maybe to travel to a function or two in Rockford, IL someday, if God's willing and the creek don't rise.
Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Reavis.
As for education, I inherited my Grandaddy McCarty's Fifth McGuffey Reader (It still contains his signature and doodlings as well as those of his father - pretty neat!). In the so-called ignorant and backward South - typical level of education at the time not much past the 8th grade - they were reading material that I would defy many college graduates to know or understand (these days at least).
Thanks for the Berry recommendation. I will surely look it up!
Everyone should get rich enough to attend our events and make large gifts. Anything more could be regarded as ostentatious, unless, of course, you increase your giving.
Again this is the normal reaction to the abnormal situation --- most college professors are not refined but in fact are effeminate --- except for many of their women colleagues. And most, or at least a significant majority, are socialists and most of them could be said to hate their country or at least the parents and grandparents of the students they have been hired to teach. Don't be afraid of reality,Nick, it is the proper nourishment for a man's soul.
I disdain at least 95 percent of college professors! The problem arises from the confusion of "educated/refined" and "effeminate/socialist," so that any family member that shows any sign of the former is accused of being the latter, even if he is not. Yes, the 95 percent are to blame, but still... it makes conversing with certain people very, very difficult.
Wealth should give an opportunity to cultivate one's higher tastes and contemplate the good, but these days it is more likely to reduce you to the level of the beasts that are tended by the husband of Nicholas' cousin.
Actually, it's my cousin's father-in-law who tends to the swine; my cousin himself tends to wires and poles (he's an electrician)... I guess that's sort of a beast in its own right (certainly to the extent that electricity powers TV sets and Internet).
Nicholas seems to be suggesting that with more money, we could lead a more refined life.
"Could" is the operative word. Most people, as you point out, don't, and as you suggest below:
Everyone should get rich enough to attend our events and make large gifts. Anything more could be regarded as ostentatious, unless, of course, you increase your giving.
... don't have any idea what to do with money once they have it.
Why live in Paris, when France is filled with small towns of great charm. Give up all the toys and gizmos created by the Gateses and Jobses. Strip down to what really matters. In the words of one particularly loony Yankee, "Simplify, Simplify!"
As you know, I do live in Paris, and as you may or may not know, I drive out to the countryside (or at least to the far-flung exburbs around Rambouillet/Versailles/Montfort-l'Amaury) every chance I get, in my beat-up but very trusty diesel-powered 1995 Renault 19. If I could live in Soulac-sur-Mer I would love to. The problem is that 1. in the modern world, I have to live off my salary, and I am not really in a position to find a decent job from which to construct a patrimony in Soulac-sur-Mer or even in Bordeaux (I have looked) or almost anywhere outside Île-de-France, 2. all of my friends are in the same situation, and if I moved to the provinces I would be very lonely and miss them very dearly (I am not an introvert or someone who functions well with just a few acquaintances), and 3. even if I did manage to escape to the country, chances are one day one of my kids would want/need to study in Paris because that's where the schools are, and if I didn't have a pied-à-terre I'd be looking at another 800 to 1000 euro a month for lodging/board! Yes, people are overeducated these days, but to a certain extent I have to work with the economic confines I'm given. Where I can get away with playing around the fence, I certainly will (home school IS, contrary to what is often supposed, a constitutionally-guaranteed right in France and, more surprisingly, has been ever since the Revolution)... but already, the life I live is pushing the limits of what demographically I "should" be able to do by the standards of the world. (I'm rather proud of that, of course, as I don't consider the modern left-libertine conventional standards to be much of a useful reference.)
With a bit of creativity, could I do better/be more wholesome? Perhaps. But despite this weird adventure, I am actually quite a cautious person. It's good to take risks, but I'd have to see a good reason before I'd be inclined to go against my nature. That may be a character fault, but for what it's worth, I'm starting to like my life, so to speak.
My friend Navrozov likes to invert Talulah Bankhead's bon mot and say, "I've been rich and I've been poor, and, believe me, poor is better." Although I think he may be oversimplifying a bit, on balance he is right, at least in this time of the world...
I know what he's getting at, and yes, he's right. But you're also right that he's oversimplifying a bit. The dilemma is pretty much exactly what Mr. Cornell pointed out, and here is my own personal view: Paris is a city that is uninhabitable for families, unless one has quite a bit of money. How else can one afford to give them enough space to play around in and "be a kid," not to mention pay private school tuition or curriculum/opportunity costs of home schooling (the public schools are nearly as bad here as they are in the States, though for different reasons)? I know people who make out okay on fairly modest salaries, but then, they come from sympathetic, tight-knit and very large families in the region. If I have learned anything these last five years, I have learned that life is always easier (and more pleasant, and heck, even materially richer, even given the same amount of money) if it is shared.
Similarly, it is almost a necessity to come from such a "classical" family background in the French provinces in order to secure one of the relatively rare jobs available there. And such support structures are not always a given: if anything, the default these days is the shattered, splintered family unit.
So we are caught up in the dilemma of on the one hand needing cash in order to make ourselves presentable to like-minded folk with whom we hope to fall in, and to protect our children from the perils of the modern world (the other option is to make ourselves into either Bohemian shantytownsfolk or Menonites), and on the other hand needing to serve this icky and immoral materialistic economic apparatus in order to "earn" such cash. It is not an easy dilemma, and one risks losing one's soul in the process. I'm not sure what the solution is, or even whether there is a solution. Perhaps it is not a "problem," just life...
That's an excellent point, and one I hadnt thought of in awhile. One of the biggest tragedies of the last 50 years or so is the killing off of local cuisine by a combination of fast food and the proliferation of foreign restaurants in every town. Now ask someone what American food is like and he'll almost certainly say 'burgers and fries'.
The fast food side of this has already had alot of comment in the past, but not so much the foreign restaurants that the rootless cosmopolitans love.
A friend of mine once gave me a book on advice to young men for a wedding present. I have enjoyed the book for almost thirty years especially his advice on poverty. Or what is called today, looking on the brighter side of things. Here are a few excerpts for the dear reader’s delight.
Poverty is that state in which a man is perpetually anxious for the future of himself and his dependents, unable to pursue life upon a standard to which he was brought up, tempted both to subservience and to a sour revolt, and tending inexorably to despair.
Once the reader arrives at this definition of poverty, the good effects flowing from such a condition are very plain. The first great attendant upon poverty is that it makes men generous. You will notice that while some few of the rich are avaricious or mean, and while all of the them have to be, from the very nature of the beast, careful, the poor and embarrassed man will easily share whatever little he has. True, this is from no good motive, but merely from his conviction that, whatever he does, it will be much the same in the end; so that his kindness to his fellows comes from a mixture of weakness and indifference. Still, it breeds a habit; and that is why men whose whole characters have been formed under this kind of poverty always throw away money when by some chance they get a lump of it.
Another boon companion attending poverty, is the cure of illusions. The most irritating thing experienced in the company of the rich, and especially rich women, is the very morass of illusion in which they live. In fact, it is not all illusion, much of it is conscious falsehood. At any rate it is an abyss of unreality, prolonged communion with will at last become intolerable. Now the poor man is physically prevented from falling into such vices of the heart and intelligence. He cannot possibly think that politicians are heroes, that judges are superhuman beings, the motives of bureaucrats in general other than vile. He can nourish no fantasies about the captains of industry or the benign interests of international bankers. The poor man is up against it, as the phrase goes. He can no more think of mankind as a garden of workers and job creators than a soldier can think of war as a picture or a sailor of the sea as a pleasure-place.
And here’s another boon of grinding anxious ,sordid poverty. There is no greater enemy to the soul than sloth; but in this state of ceaseless dull exasperation, like a kind of grumbling toothache, sloth is impossible. Yet, another enemy of the soul is pride, and even the sour poor man cannot really nourish pride; he may wish to nourish it; he may hope in the future to nourish it; but he cannot immediately nourish it. Or again, the inmost of man which ancient superstitions have almost all agreed to call the soul, is hurt by luxury. Now poverty, in the long run, forbids or restricts luxury.
Lastly, of poverty, I think this, that it prepares one very carefully for the grave. I heard it said once by a beggar in a passion that the rich took nothing with them down to death. In the literal acceptation of the text he was wrong, for the rich take down with them to death flattery, folly, illusion, pride and a good many other lesser garments which have gown into their skins, and the tearing off of which at the great stripping must hurt a great deal. But of course the mendicant meant they take nothing in the way of motor cars, hot water, clean change of clothes and the various other intolerably boring games. This is to say, the rich go down to death stripped of external things not grown into their skins; the poor go down to death stripped of everything. Therefore in Charon’s boat they get forward seats, and are therefore the first upon the other shore. And this, I suppose, is some sort of advantage.
I think I'm just not at a point in life where I can read such words and do anything but accept the theoretical beauty of them and not worry about how it is practicable. In my current situation, "poverty" would mean living next to incendiary Maghrebians and sending one's children to anticlerical state schools.
I'm going to have to defer to the notion I deferred to years back: the thought that, "I suppose it will all make sense when I grow up."
Dear Nicholas,
You will do just fine as you have good tastes in location, spirits, bread and cheese. Do not fret about your future. Even the lillies of the field are not as beautiful as your humble and delightful hospitality existing in the very heart of Paris. I will never forget the bright occassion or the delightful soul that offered it and still offers it through his thoughts and words for all of those with ears to hear or eyes to see.....
The rich man is the one who has good health.
Mr. Maxwell, I was of course using food as a metaphor, but I believe your point is well taken, too. It's interesting, especially since spending a year in Korea and an equal amount of time in Iraq (courtesy of the U.S. Army), barbecue, cornbread, fried catfish, and turnip greens, and other examples of our native foods, taste so much better, reminding me of who I am and where I come from.
What?! You don't like Dried Squid Jerky? Or raw Sea Cucumber?
Actually, I'll be the first to admit that many of Korea's delicacies are a little in the "you're not really going to eat that" category, but my mom taught me to make a mean Bim Bim Bop and some great Kalbi Ribs that no one but a communist vegetarian would turn down.
However, I'm all for cornbread and fried okra and collard greens, too.
I guess you'd call it Southern Korean Cuisine. Surely we could start a fusion restaurant with this theme. We can call it "Grits and Kim-chi!"