Hydie sipped at her glass. Here was another man living in his own portable glass cage. Most people she knew did. Each one inside a kind of invisible telephone box. They did not talk to you directly but through a wire. Their voices came through distorted and mostly they talked to the wrong number, even when they lay in bed with you. And yet her craving to smash the glass between the cages had come back again. If cafes were the home of those who had lost their country, bed was the sanctuary of those who had lost their faith.
The United States today is in a crisis of civilizational self-confidence, as are Western societies generally. That crisis is the real subject of Arthur Koestler’s 1950 novel Age of Longing, Koestler being the author of the much-better-known Darkness at Noon.
Age of Longing is set in a Europe which is facing the very real possibility–indeed the likelihood–of a Soviet invasion, but does not want to face that reality. Hydie Anderson, living in Paris with her father (an American military attache) was a devout Catholic during her teens, but has lost her faith. She was briefly married, and has had several relationships with men, but in none of them has she found either physical or emotional satisfaction…she describes her life with a phrase from T S Eliot: “frigid purgatorial fires,” and she longs for a sense of connection.
Through her friend Julien DeLattre, Hydie is introduced to a number of Paris intellectuals and East European emigres. Members of the former group are mostly in denial about the danger of a Soviet attack…many of them have indeed convinced themselves that Communist rule wouldn’t be all that bad. For example, there’s Professor Pontieux (modeled on Sartre)…”He did not believe that the Commonwealth of Freedomloving People had solved all its problems and become an earthly paradise. But it was equally undeniable that it was an expression of History’s groping progress towards a new form of society, when it followed that those who opposed this progress were siding with the forces of reaction and preparing the way for conflict and war–the worst crime against Humanity.” Vardi, another intellectual, says that if he had to choose between the (American) juke box on one hand, and Pravda on another, he isn’t sure which he would pick.
Madame Pontieux, modeled on Simone de Bouvoir (with whom Koestler had a brief affair) is less ambiguous about her choice among the alternatives. “You cannot enter a cafe or a restaurant without finding it full of Americans who behave as if the place belonged to them,” she complains to an American official. When the Russian emigre Leontiev suggests that France would not survive without American military support, pointing out that “nature abhors a vacuum,” she turns on him:
“I am surprised at your moderation, Citizen Leontiev,” Madame Pontieux said sarcastically. “I thought you would tell us that without this young man’s protection the Commonwealth army would at once march to the Atlantic shore.”
“It would,” said Leontiev. “I believed that everyone knew that.”
“I refuse to believe it,” responds Madame Pontieux. “But if choose one must I would a hundred times rather dance to the music of a Balalaika than a juke box.”
(The French intellectuals Koestler knew must have really hated juke boxes!)
Julien is romantically interested in Hydie, but she is not attracted to him, despite the fact that he seems to have much to recommend him–a hero of the French Resistance, wounded in action, and a successful poet. On one occasion, she tells him that she could never sleep with him because they are too similar–“it would be like incest”..on another occasion, though, she tells him that “what I most dislike about you is your attitude of arrogant broken-heartedness.” Parallel to Hydie’s loss of religious faith is Julien’s loss of his secular faith in the creation of a new society. He does not now believe in utopia, or any approximation to same, but he does believe in the need to face reality, however unpleasant it may be. Hydie argues that the Leftists of their acquaintance may be silly, but at least they believe in something:
“Perhaps they believe in a mirage–but isn’t it better to believe in a mirage than to believe in nothing?”
Julien looked at her coldly, almost with contempt:
“Definitely not. Mirages lead people astray. That’s why there are so many skeletons in the desert. Read more history. Its caravan-routes are strewn with the skeletons of people who were thirsting for faith–and their faith made them drink salt water and eat the sand, believing it was the Lord’s Supper.”
At a diplomatic affair, Hydie meets Fedya, a committed Communist who works for the Soviet Embassy. She is powerfully attracted to him: things get physical very quickly and, from Hydie’s point of view, very satisfactorily. (Fedya is one of Koestler’s best-developed characters. His boyhood in Baku is vividly sketched, and Koestler–himself a former Communist–does a good job in showing how a political faith can become core to an individual’s whole personality.)
The affair blows up when Fedya humiliates Hydie sexually in a way that could only have occurred to a Dialectical Materialist–and, indeed, humiliation was not Fedya’s intent, he was “only” attempting the demonstrate to her the truth of Pavlovian conditioning as an explanation for human behavior. Hurt and furious, she pours out her heart to Julien…who now feels free to tell her the truth about Fedya, a truth he felt unable to divulge while Fedya was Hydie’s lover.
Fedya’s real job, underneath his diplomatic cover, is to collect lists of names–the names of the key people to be killed or imprisoned immediately after the Soviet invasion. Hydie is, of course, horrified, and is particularly appalled that so many people already knew about Fedya’s activities–and did nothing to stop them–while she was blissfully unaware.
Julien tells her, as does her father the Colonel, that nothing can be done about Fedya because of diplomatic immunity and because the French government does not want to create an international incident by deporting him. Refusing to believe this, Hydie arranges a meeting with a senior French security official. The improbably-named Jules Commanche (who, like Julien, is a hero of the French Resistance) also tells Hydie that nothing can be done, and that if she attempts to make an issue of it, the Soviets and their fellow-travelers will simply paint her as nothing more than a hysterical jilted lover. Hydie remains unwilling to accept the conclusion that Fedya must be left alone to continue his activities:
“How can you, a Frenchman, say that it is not a crime when a man walks around marking down your compatriots with a pencil–like a man branding cattle for the slaughter-house? Don’t you see–don’t you see what is waiting for you?”
Commanche, who had half risen, let himself slump back into the chair. He no longer tried to conceal his exasperation.
“Are you really so naive, Mademoiselle, as to imagine that we know less about these things than you do? Do you think that we were unaware of Monsieur Nikitin’s activities, or of your affair with him, if it comes to that? And as for your somewhat patronizing remark about what is ‘waiting for us’–myself, my family, my friends, in short, the French people–allow me to refuse to discuss it, in order to avoid embarrassing you.”
“Me? I don’t understand?…”
“Well, we both know what is waiting for you. A comfortable airliner, when things get hot–and some nostalgic regrets for the sunny cafes on the Champs-Elysees…”
For his own part, Commanche plans a heroic but militarily-futile death in resisting the coming Soviet invasion: he does not wish to survive what he sees as the inevitable destruction of European civilization. After sharing his own sense of hopelessness with Hydie, he asks her for a date, which she rejects.
In an anguish of anger and despair, Hydie buys a gun and goes to Fedya’s apartment. After asking him for a drink, she get out the weapon and tells him why he must die.
He summoned all his patience and self-discipline for a last attempt to bring her back to reason. He forced himself to make his voice patient and gentle; and, after the first few words, its sound made him indeed regain his calm–and even feel a kindly pity for the unhappy fat-legged girl.
“Listen, please,” he said. “We have talked about these matters often before. You don’t like that we make scientific studies of human nature like Professor Pavlov. You don’t like revolutionary vigilance and lists on the social reliability of people, and discipline and re-education camps. You think I am brutal and ridiculous and uncultured. Then why did you like making love with me? I will tell you why and you will understand…”
“I am not a tall and handsome man…There are no tall and handsome men who come from the Black Town in Baku, because there were few vitamins in the food around the oilfields. So it was not for this that you liked to make love with me…It was because I believe in the future and am not afraid of it, and because to know what he lives for makes a man strong…Of course many ugly things are happening in my country. Do you think I do not know about them?…And what difference will it make in a hundred years that there is a little ugliness now? It always existed. In a hundred years there will be no ugliness–only a classless world state of free people. There will be no more wars and no more children born in Black Towns with big bellies and flies crawling in their eyes. And also no more children of the bourgeoisie with crippled characters because they grew up in a decadent society…I am not handsome, but you have felt attracted to me because you know that we will win and that we are only at the beginning–and that you will lose because you are at the end…That is why I was not afraid of your little revolver, because you can’t have the courage to shoot me. To kill, one must believe in something.”
Nevertheless, Hydie pulls the trigger…
One one level, this book is sort of a romance novel, with the theme “chicks like self-confident guys.” This is no doubt true, but this point wasn’t Koestler’s main reason for writing Age of Longing. Koestler’s deeper theme is that the decline in religious belief in the West (and Koestler himself was certainly no traditional religious believer) has created a hunger for faith which will likely be filled by those who carry their convictions with great certainty. As Jules Commanche explains to Hydie:
“You cannot cure aberrations of the political libido by arguments…Now the source of all political libido is faith, and its object is the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Lost Paradise, Utopia, what have you. Therefore each time a god dies there is trouble in History. People feel that they have been cheated by his promises, left with a dud check in their pocket. The last time a god died was on July 14, 1789, the day when the Bastille was stormed. On that day the Holy Trinity was replaced by the three-word slogan which you find written over our town halls and post offices. Europe has not yet recovered from that operation, and all our troubles today are secondary complications. The People–and when I use that word, Mademoiselle, I always refer to people who have no bank accounts–the people have been deprived of their only asset: the knowledge, or the illusion, whichever you like, of having an immortal soul. Their faith is dead, their kingdom is dead, only the longing remains. And this longing, Mademoiselle, can express itself in beautiful or murderous forms, just like the frustrated sex instinct…Only the longing remains–a dumb, inarticulate longing of the instinct, without knowledge of its source and object. So the people, the masses, mill around with that irksome feeling of having an uncashed check in their pockets and whoever tells them ‘Oyez, oyez, the Kingdom is just round the corner, in the second street to the left,’ can do with them what he likes.”
A few thoughts on Commanche’s speech and its applicability to our times…
First, I think I disagree with Commanche/Koestler that loss of belief in personal immortality is of the essence here. Indeed, Fedya is an atheist, but his faith is strong. What matters more (from a societal standpoint) is the belief in the society’s moral authority, in its future, in its system of symbols. And it is specifically these things that have been systematically undermined by so many forces in our society and especially in academia. (When people with PhDs are willing to accept the idea that gravity is a “social construct”–see The Sokal Hoax–is it any wonder that many ordinary people feel disoriented?)
Second, I think that while our present problem does involve people chasing new gods and promulgators of new faiths…see Tara Isabella Burton’s book Strange Rites for a description of some of them…our more serious problem involves those who are no longer seeking and have abandoned themselves to cynicism. I find Hydie, as drawn by Koestler, to be a fairly appealing person, despite her naivete and self-centeredness. I suspect that a present-day Hydie would be much less likeable.
I’m reminded of some lines from Kipling, in which he describes the fall of a soul into Hell:
The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell:
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain
But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again
There are probably more people now at the clinkered sin that cannot burn again stage than there were when Koestler wrote.
Julien, in explaining to Hydie why he cannot write anymore, says:
Fallen angels don’t write poems. There is lyric poetry, and sacred poetry, and a poetry of love and a poetry of rebelling; the poets of apostasy do not exist.
The book ends on a note of almost unredeemed darkness:
Her thoughts travelled back to Sister Boutillot standing in the alley which led to the pond…Oh, if she could only go back to the infinite comfort of father confessors and mother superiors, of a well-ordered hierarchy which promised punishment and reward, and furnished the world with justice and meaning. If only one could go back! But she was under the curse of reason, which rejected whatever might quench her thirst without abolishing the gnawing of the urge; which rejected the answer without abolishing the question. For the place of God had become vacant and there was a draught blowing through the world as in an empty flat before the new tenants have arrived.
70 years later, I think we now begin to see who the New Tenants might be, and it is not comforting knowledge.
Hydie’s (pre-Fedya) sexual frustration is, of course, symbolic: it reflects the West’s loss of self-confidence, but it can be interpreted at a more literal level as well. Does a societal loss of self-confidence also play out at the individual level of attraction or lack of same?
A commenter at Chicago Boyz reported that a significant number of female British medical students have been converting to Islam. This writer, herself a Muslim, says that “Since 9/11, vast numbers of educated, privileged middle-class white women have converted to Islam”…she identifies these converts as including women at “investment banks, TV stations, universities and in the NHS.” Her concern is not that they are converting to Islam…something I’d presume she would applaud…but that they are converting to “the most restricted forms” of the religion. (And it is, of course, among the believers in the most absolute form of any religion or political system that one is likely to find the most obviously self-confident believers.)
The late Dr David Yeagley, the American Indian (Comanche) who blogged under the traditional name Bad Eagle, has quoted a Cheyenne saying: “A nation is never conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.” The link from the preceding paragraph suggests that in Europe, at least, there are more than a few female hearts on the ground concerning the future of Western civilization. The prevalence of women at anti-Israel, anti-American, and even pro-Hamas demonstrations is a disturbing indicator of this in the USA.
I don’t think Koestler’s protagonist would have been attracted to a fundamentalist Muslim or a Hamas advocate in the way that she was drawn to the communist Fedya. The gap in values would have been far wider: while Communism is a bastard child of the Enlightenment, radical Islam is counter-Enlightenment, and does not make the kind of universalist, humanitarian, and secular promises that the Communists made–the cruelty is closer to the surface. But the loss of Western self-confidence has greatly accelerated since Koestler wrote, and today’s Hydies are unlikely to share the educational and religious depth of the woman Koestler imagined. (Again, see examples among the current packs/herds of demonstrators.)
I said earlier that the book ends on a note of almost unredeemed darkness…Koestler does permit his readers a small glimpse of hope. One of the book’s characters is the British nuclear physicist Lord Edwards, known as “Hercules the Atom-Smasher” because of his powerful physique. Edwards/Hercules is a Communist sympathizer and fellow-traveller who has repeatedly modified his views on the expanding-universe question to conform to the latest “politically correct” edicts from Moscow.
In this passage, Lord Edwards is talking with the French poet Navarin. It has now become clear that the Soviet invasion is imminent.
“So what are you going to do?”
As Navarin looked at him with an uncomprehending smile, he added in a grunt:
“I mean if you are invaded.”
The poet arched his eyebrows in surprise at the Englishman’s awkward manner of formulating the question, and answered in a tone of explaining to a child that the earth is round:
“In the case of conflict, which could only be caused by Imperialist provocation, the duty of every democratic-minded person is to support unreservedly, unhesitatingly and unconditionally the Commonwealth of Freedomloving People.”
“Hmm,” said Hercules. He said nothing for a while…then unexpectedly he wagged a finger in front of Navarin’s face and grunted:
“I call that treason.”
Navarin thought he had misunderstood Edwards, whose French accent was abominable.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, with his ravaged cherub’s smile.
“I call that treason,” Hercules the Atom-Smasher shouted over the rattle of the wheels; then with a deep contented sign that seemed to release his chest from some long-standing oppression, he settled back into his corner, and decided then and there to go once more into that wretched question of the expanding universe; but this time in the light of purely mathematical evidence.
Previous version of this post here, with some good comments. I also linked the original NYT review of from 1951.
I went to read the previous comments which were fun.
This is an excellent essay and review.
Thanks, AVI I think it’s an important book…out of print & not on Kindle, though used copies can be found. Somewhat oddly, I see it’s included along with Darkness at Noon in both Monarch and Bright Notes study guides, so must be assigned reading somewhere.
Strongly suspect that the civilizational self-confidence issue is closely linked to the decline in fertility which is now affecting just about all Western countries.
Too bad it is out of print. I hoard books, for that reason. I am reading a history of the German U-boat campaign in War Two from 1955, written by a high-up staffer to Doenitz, and a keen observer of people. Of all his available choices, Hitler passed the baton on his death to Doenitz, the most professional of his remaining underlings.
This essay has a lot of meaning about our current social norms in the West and why radical Islam appeals to many as a Truth they can believe in, surpassing Marx and Leninist theory and practice.
James Clavell’s book “Whirlwind” captured the feel of Iran prior to the coup (when I was there) and during it. An interesting point about that revolution is that the communist fellow travels helping the mullahs overthrow the Shah expected they would have a place at the table of a post-Shah Iran.
Not quite. As soon as the mullahs had control, they started to kill the communists as quickly as possible. Figure the vignette in Calvell’s book when an Iranian executes a Russian “asset” on a national scale. The only survivors made it across a border into another country before a kill team got to them.
Radical Islam, not so much communism, is now more of a threat to Western Civilization and that way of life. Or so I think.
Mohammed came out of a cave (the story goes) in the 7th Century AD with his rewrite of the Bible. Radical Islam seems to think humanity hit its apex on that day. And they will kill you or anyone else who disagrees. Even other muslims are not safe, for piety to Allah is a contest, and if you aren’t dedicated enough, a more dedicated believer is your enemy.
The mullahs of Iran embrace modern nuclear weapons as a means to eliminate anyone who rejects the 7th Century AD, and their authority of speaking directly to Allah for guidance in all affairs of life, death, justice, leadership.
Khomeini’s “Green Book” explains how to tell if your wife is cheating on you. During menstruation, if her blood flows down the right leg, she is faithful. If the flow is down the other leg, she is a whore, to be cast out with nothing but her clothes, if not she is stoned to death. Read that passage in a copy of the book in a Tehran bookshop. I should have bought the book.
We live in interesting times.
Fantastic. I posted to Twitter (x) under my moniker pointsnfigures1
It reminds me of what my wife noticed back in the late 90s, early 2000s. Oprah was doing all that “spiritual” stuff but it had no anchor in any organized, or unorganized religion and it wasn’t science either. Just “be”. She joined up with a group of women, most of them left wing Jewish and they were searching for some sort of spirituality. My wife remarked that what they were searching for was covered by Jesus and Christianity. They were put off.
For many many people, politics is religion. It started during the Clinton administration with the “permanent campaign”. Just ratcheted up from there and social media helps fuel the fire.
The global warming cult is a subset of the politics is religion cult. Since the Dem nominee loves Venn diagrams, i thought I would start to create a mental picture of one. But, many who follow Trump are similar. I saw this during the primaries if someone mentioned something nice about DeSantis or one of the others running. They were verbally attacked and dismissed online.
I am a heretic for even pointing that out. I will vote for Trump, and like some of what he stands for. The opportunity cost of the other side is the abyss. At the same time, he has foibles and is human.
It looks to me like there’s a lot of ghost-dance vs ghost-dance fighting going on out there, with large elements of both the Left and the Right crying out for a return to the sacred Faith of the Past, and for a rejection of secularism and tolerance as being Snares of the Enemy. The elements on the Right are at least open about rejecting secularism and tolerance while the Left calls its own faith and bigotry “secularism and tolerance” and rejects actual secularism and tolerance with claims that the authentic thing is false, hateful, and dead-white-male.
“We have lost the creamy goodness of the Good Old Days. It is a Punishment; the good old creamy goodness has been taken away from us because we have strayed from the True Faith. But if we return to the True Faith, as pious and zealous as we were in the Golden Age, then we will become filled once more with Holy Power and Sacred Benevolence, and the Good Old Days will return!”
“But if we continue to turn away from the True Faith, then the evil sins of the Enemy, the sinfully evil Unbelievers, will triumph. A future of decay and horror and utter defeat will be our lot, and we will never see the creamy goodness of the Good Old Days ever again! So repent! Repent! Dance the Ghost-Dance of Our People and Return to the True Faith!”
David F: “Strongly suspect that the civilizational self-confidence issue is closely linked to the decline in fertility which is now affecting just about all Western countries.
The decline in fertility is not just a Western phenomenon. It is fairly much a global issue — even affecting Islamic countries. China abandoned the One Child rule … but it does not seem to have made much of a difference. Russia has been strongly supporting large families .. but there don’t appear to be many takers. Japan has apparently reached the situation where a significant proportion of Japanese females will die as virgins.
The loss of civilization self-confidence is certainly an issue, but I wonder if the decline in fertility is also related to the wide availability of the technologies of birth control and abortion. Once upon a time, boy met girl and the result was baby — even though lots of women really did not want to become mothers. The optimistic view is that women who don’t have the mothering gene are now voluntarily climbing out of the gene pool. In a few generations, the surviving women will mostly be the offspring of women who carried the mothering gene, and the smaller remaining human populations will be happier for it.
Thanks for the X link, Jeff.
Welcome Instapundit readers, hope you’ll stay awhile & take a look at some of the other posts.
Gavin…”The decline in fertility is not just a Western phenomenon. It is fairly much a global issue — even affecting Islamic countries”
Israel is an outlier. TFR of 2.9 versus 1.7 for the US and 2.0 for India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Lord Edwards got it right. The key is the expanding universe, looked at from a purely mathematical point of view. More precisely, the great mathematician Sir Edmund Whittaker (FRS, Copley Medalist) pointed out in 1948, in his book Space and Spirit, that Aquinas’ Five Ways are just mathematical sequence completion arguments, which work much better in modern physics than they do in the Aristotelean physics used by Aquinas (the Second Way uses the expanding universe, in its modern physics version). Whittaker’s theorems were ignored at the time, but important mathematical theorems will necessarily be re-discovered. Copernicus re-discovered the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos. I myself re-discovered Whittaker’s theorems when applying mathematical sequence arguments to the expanding universe.
So if modern physics is even partially correct – and it is – God exists. And He can be proven to exist. So, eventually faith will return, and with a return of Christianity – the spiritual foundation of Western Civilization – Western Civilization will undergo a rebirth.
It happened in Russia. Communism was overthrown, Russian Orthodox Christianity – the spiritual foundation of Russian civilization – has returned, and Russian civilization has been re-born. Fedya would be pleased at the outcome – no Black Towns in the Russian Federation – though he would have been shocked at the cause, the cause he himself fought.
Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics Tulane University
Two things…
Going back to the post, Man in general, but especially the West has yet to fully come to grips with demons unleashed by the Enlightenment and its assault on tradition (let alone religion) and its concomitant triumph of Reason. If the French Revolution and its spasmodic “Year Zero” approach was the first manifestation of this tension, then the next was the 19th Century rise of Darwinism and Marxism and their claims to define society and Man’s place in the world through science.
Our current conflicts, based largely in post-modernism, is a reflection of that 19th Century assault by Darwin and Marx. Reason wiped the culture of religion and tradition and left a fallow ground, something Nietzsche understood. There is something transcendent in the human condition that is beyond reason alone, something beyond our grasp and ability to control though not to understand, that must be reflected in society as a whole.
With apologies to the post, Fedya aligns perfectly with this, and somebody that Koestler understands all too well. He is a Communist and a “believer” but it is something that it is ultimately sterile; Koester’s message is that Fedya and his belief is as if a cut flower, beautiful but doomed to die. In a way the same is with atheists such as Singer, whose cultural patrimony is rooted in a world that they no longer believe in but without which their contribution will be rendered meaningless in short order; the world belongs to those who believe in a transcendent, not just in something greater than their selves but beyond their reach alone. Singer, Fedya, and others are in a sense reliant and perhaps even “parasitical” on a larger culture that they despise.
The other deals with demographics. Total fertility rates in a given country can be misleading because they mask larger cultural trends. Israel’s fertility rate has remained above replacement rate yet that number has masked a larger reality that
that observant Jews have 2x the fertility as secular The protests regarding Supreme Court reforms that were threatening to tear Israel apart pre-10/7 reflect this long-term demographic trend as what was once the politically-dominant secular Labor Party has been reduced to its last bastion of political power in the Supreme Court.
Then there is Quebec which from 1759 (when immigration from France was cut off by the British conquest) to 1961 grew from 70,000 to more than 5 million almost exclusively on fertility and with the larger culture rooted in traditional Catholicism. With the advent of the “Quiet Revolution” in the 1950, with Quebec nationalism and “cultural modernization”, the fertility rate dropped from 4.0 to 1.5 with any subsequent population growth through immigration by people who are not on board with the traditional French-Canadian project. In short the French Canadian society of Les Habitants , one of the oldest populations in North America is in a death spiral.
The future belongs to those who show up.
As far as British converts to Islam, I remember Mark Steyn writing about that in the 2000s. Remember what Bin Laden said about the “strong horse”? That works for cultures and religion as well, people who hate themselves do not survive
A good book on the destruction wreaked by the Enlightenment on traditional culture is Stephen Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism Hicks’ thesis is that the rise of post-modernism was enabled not only by the failings of reason as a means of discerning reality but by the eradication of traditional institutions caused by the larger project of modernity. Think Nietzsche’s “God is Dead.”
Once reason and modernity exhausted itself the way was laid open to the nihilism of post-modernism.
Note this destruction wasn’t caused so much by say the Bolsheviks shooting all the priests as the inability of Kant’s and Kierkagaard to adequately reconcile religion with reason enough to restore it to its former preeminence, see Church of England attendance. As Neil Young once said “Once you’re gone, you cannot come back” Not at least for a very long time
Related: Glenn Reynolds’ column in the NY Post about the Olympics Last Supper debacle, and on deliberate uglification as an assertion of power.
https://nypost.com/2024/07/28/opinion/olympics-last-supper-debacle-was-latest-effort-to-denigrate-western-culture/
I suspect that people who are expected to be creative–but don’t really possess much creativity–are particularly prone perpetrating this sort of thing.
The St-Exupery passage I posted earlier this month is very relevant:
Transmitting the Passwords–or Not
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/71241.html
US increase in population? 50% by native births. The other 50% ….guess.
Canada?
3% Native births. 97%…
Sweden. More than half births Muslim.
…..
“I would a hundred times rather dance to the music of a Balalaika than a juke box.”
That quote alone is worth the price admission. As if that were the issue!
George M Weinberg…oh, I do believe that there a significant number of people who make political & religious choices based on aesthetics.
A woman I knew in college, and dated for a while, mentioned at FB that she was drawn to Eastern religions, especially Hinduism, in part for the aesthetics of the temples, and other aspects of the religion, as opposed to colder and more constrained aesthetics she found in her parents’ Christian denomination.
continuing with the aesthetic factor…see this post from Ruxandra Teslo: Political polarisation by gender: a matter of aesthetics?
https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/political-polarisation-by-gender
This posting has prompted me to get a copy of and read Age of Longing.
Gringo…please post your thoughts after you read it.
…see this post from Ruxandra Teslo: Political polarisation by gender: a matter of aesthetics?
See it I did.
I found it to be weirdly fascinating, like a flat-Earther explaining away horizons or a creationist explaining why evolution can’t be real.
It’s typical that the links are of the usual leftist slant. I clicked on one and found Matt Yglesias described as “centrist.” Of course there was also the de rigueur Orange Man Bad blather, etc. Cutting and pasting the tasty bits, because nothing I see from this thick-headed dolt makes me want to spend more time reading her blather.
The well-oiled machine of technocapital shall continue to work in the background. Maligned as it is by everyone, it will nevertheless quietly increase our standards of living, unless some overly inane regulations completely smother it.
Meanwhile, back in reality, living standards in the West including in her Blighty homeland continue to degrade. Regulations aren’t her only problem. Three children were just murdered in her country in a knife attack, with the usual government response- pretend it was done by a white male and then attack people who notice it wasn’t.
Part of it is actual policy positions that are deeply unpopular among young educated women which have come to be associated with the Republican Party (and due to the importance of American Culture, all right wing parties), such as the anti abortion stance.
This woman lives in England. I bet she has no idea what any of the actual US abortion law was or is, pre or post the overturning of Roe. I’m not sure she knows that European restrictions on abortion are- or were- vastly more restrictive than in the US, or even that she would care. She just hearts abortion. But she’s educated, right?
Women also reject the machismo displayed by some overly interventionist types: I do not think it’s a coincidence that the artists who got “cancelled’“ (Dixie Chicks) or almost cancelled (in the case of Madonna) for opposing the Iraq War were…
Where has she been for the couple decades or so? Trump is the anti-war candidate now, in the country in which she does not live. People of her ilk in her own country are shrieking about a need to reintroduce conscription to fight Russia. Presumably this would mainly be men sent to die.
It finds that these men are more likely to believe that the promotion of women’s and girls’ rights has been excessive, to the point of jeopardizing opportunities for men and boys. This resentment is particularly strong among men who perceive state institutions in their region as unfair and reside in areas experiencing increasing unemployment and intense job competition.
Well gosh. I don’t know about Airstrip One, but I do recall that when I was in the US navy circa 1990 some school slots designated for women would sit open rather than have them be filled by an available man instead of an unavailable woman. This situation- discrimination against men enforced by the state- has gotten incredibly worse since then. How dare men notice!!
It suggested that being associated with the Tories carried a social stigma, a sort of inherent uncoolness that wasn’t necessarily tied to their specific political stances.
Oh. So women base their votes upon their feelings and not policy. Noted. This needs at least forty exclamation points but that would look silly.
I’m a Genomics PhD student at the Sanger Institute, Cambridge UK.
I wouldn’t have bothered to smear any of my cranky opinions about her yammering here or anywhere else on the internet until I saw this. Going back to my time in Uncle Sugar’s canoe club, I’ve noticed that the US regime has placed a heavy emphasis upon pushing women into what were previously male fields of endeavor. From everything I’ve read the EU is at least as bad. I’ve frequently seen it noted that men are avoiding college to instead become truck drivers or welders or other trades.
How many of those men would have made excellent engineers or doctors… or genomics Phds?
Instead, we get Ruxandro Teslo.
Fail.
Xennady…I think Ruxandra is smart and open-minded, even though I often disagree with her, especially about US politics.
I previously linked her post The Road to (Mental) Serfdom, which was part of a series on the problems with the whole idea of ‘misinformation’, which I thought was very good (the series, that is, not the idea of misinformation).
https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/the-road-to-mental-serfdom-and-misinformation
Re the present post, aesthetics is indeed a factor in political choice, and whether it should be or should not, those involved in political marketing & persuasion need to be cognizant of it.
No reason to attack her professional qualifications. Basic logic suggests that the fact that some significant number of people are in a certain position because demographic quotas does not imply that all, or even most, people of that demographic are there only because they fit that criterion.
Also, I forwarded one of Ruxandra’s posts on biology to someone I know who has a lot of experience in the medical research world and is on the boards of several early-stage companies. Very positive feedback.
I think Ruxandra is smart and open-minded, even though I often disagree with her, especially about US politics.
I think Ruxandra is a thick-headed dolt. I’m not willing to waste any more of my precious time reading her ignorant opinions about the country I live in nor do I care about her day job. I’m basing my opinion upon what I read from her expositing upon topics I know something about.
She may well be excellent at that day job- as you suggest- and I wish her the best. This isn’t personal and I think it incredibly unlikely she’ll ever see my criticism at all. If she does, she has no reason to care that some internet rando has said mean things about her.
That said, I’m thoroughly and viscerally tired of reading people giving me an explainer that conservatives are icky because reasons.
In this example Ruxandra femsplains to us that conservatives are icky because aesthetics.
Mm-hmm. Meanwhile, back in the country she inhabits, there is widespread rioting and protests against the regime that favors illegal colonist invaders over the actual citizens of her country. The people who notice this is a problem tend to be conservative and also tend to be men.
My take is that men are less susceptible to the endless firehose of propaganda the regime sprays upon everyone all the time, in every way it can. Per Ruxandra, this makes us icky. She posted a picture of pouty- faced woman so us dumb males would understand what she meant.
I’ve had enough of this feminist nonsense. I still recall the Swedish feminists who were pretending to be horses in some crazy protest because Stockholm had a statue of Gustavus Adolphus while completely ignoring the endless rapes from the sacred swarms of “refugees” who turned their country into the rape capital of Europe.
Has Ruxandra noticed this? Or is that too icky?