Activism and Quietism – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Which Side Are You On?

I have criticized Rod Dreher and others for "floating above the fray," for trying to be objective and impartial in those practical situations in which immediate action is required and in which the requisite action is impeded by the otherwise laudable attempt to arrive at the objective truth of the situation.

"Can't you see that failing to support Donald J. Trump, the only one on our side willing and able to achieve results, aids and abets the political enemy?" "Can't you grasp that politics is a practical enterprise?" "Are you incapable of distinguishing between political theory and political practice?" "The very survival of the Republic is at stake and you want to wait around for the perfect conservative candidate?" "You are letting the unattainable best become the enemy of the achievable good!" "What is wrong with you, man, which side are you on?"

But now I need to examine whether I myself am being consistent on the Ukraine question. I have criticized those who attack and indeed smear Tucker Carlson and others as 'Putin supporters.' Am I not "floating above the fray" when I try to understand the current Ukraine horror and how it came about and how it could have been avoided? Am I not aiding and abetting a vicious aggressor when I credit Carlson et al. with insights worth pondering? Which side am I on here? Does not my attempt at being fair and balanced have the effect of aiding Vlad the Aggressor? Should I take the Dick Morris line against Tucker Carlson?

When we examine our consciences — a salutary practice to be enacted on a daily basis — we sometimes in all justice must acquit ourselves of the charges we bring against ourselves. And so it seems to me in this case. There is an important difference.

As an American citizen I have a strong interest in the preservation of the Republic and the defense of all that makes it what it is, including its borders. Threats to it are threats to me and my way of life, the life of the philosopher who is committed to free speech, open inquiry, and the pursuit of truth I do not have the same interest in the defense of Ukraine and its borders. This is not to say that the USA should not help Ukraine defend itself. It is to insist on the principle, Country First. A special case thereof is America First. Let us review what this means.

It does not mean that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First. If I revert to America First, that is to be understood as an instance of Country First.

So America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings. Germany has a rather sordid history; but Germany First is compatible with a recognition of the wrong turn that great nation took during a well-known twelve-year period (1933-1945) in her history.

An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or of political Islam.

An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.

So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.

America First is as sound an idea as that each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families. If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare. If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.

The details are disputable, but not the general principle. The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first.

The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries. That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned. I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. Such efforts are arguably supererogatory.

One implication of Country First is that an immigration policy must be to the benefit of the host country. The interests of the members of the host country supersede the interests of the immigrants. Obviously, there is no blanket right to immigrate. Obviously, potential immigrants must be vetted and must meet certain standards. Obviously, no country is under any obligation to accept subversive elements or elements who would work to undermine the nation's culture. Obviously, obviously, obviously — but not to the destructive leftists who have hijacked the Democrat Party and have installed a puppet to do their bidding.

Suppose you disagree with the enlightened nationalism I am sketching. What will you put in its place? If you are not a nationalist, what are you? Some sort of internationalist or cosmopolitan. But the notion of being a citizen of the world is empty since there is no world government and never will be. What could hold it together except the hegemony of one of the nations or a coalition of nations ganging up on the others?

The neocons tried to press America and it values and ways upon the world or upon the Middle Eastern portion thereof. The neocon mistake was to imagine that our superior system of government could be imposed on benighted and backward peoples riven by tribal hatreds and depressed by an inferior religion. The folly of that should now be evident. One cannot bomb the benighted into Enlightenment.

Leftist internationalists want to bring the world to America thereby diluting and ultimately destroying our values. The mistake of the multi-culti cultural Marxists is to imagine that comity is possible without commonality, that wildly diverse sorts of people can live together in peace and harmony. Or at least that is one mistake of the politically correct multi-cultis.

So the way forward is enlightened nationalism. Trump understands this in his intuitive and inarticulate way. The Never-Trumpers do not. Their brand of yap-and-scribble, inside-the-Beltway, bow-tied, pseudo-conservatism puts a premium on courtly behavior and gentlemanly debate that is an end in itself and rarely issues in ameliorative action. The people, however, demand action.

Which side are you on?

Between Time and Eternity

Tom O. asks,

How does one reconcile the temporal with the eternal, in a personal/spiritual or experiential manner? The political situation of our time strikes me as dire and incredibly important. Yet such things are transitory and will, ultimately, pass away, and so in another sense are not so important. I am torn between these two extremes on a daily basis. The latter is a source of hope and peace, the former a source of anxiety and unrest. Focusing more on one at the expense of the other seems to only intensify the problem, since doing that seems to downplay the importance of one of the extremes, when what I am after is a reconciliation of the two that does not dismiss or downplay either. But perhaps that goal itself is unattainable.

We are made for eternity, but we find ourselves in time. Both spheres are real and neither can be dismissed or pronounced unreal. You and I agree on that. You want a reconciliation of the two "that does not dismiss or downplay either" while suspecting that such a reconciliation is "unattainable."

Here I think lies the germ of an answer. One of the spheres needs to be "downplayed." For if there are these two spheres, they cannot be equally important.

Why can't they be equally important?

Within time, we rightly value the relatively permanent over the relatively impermanent. We reckon him a fool who sacrifices a lifetime of satisfactions for a moment's pleasure. John Belushi, for example, threw away his life and career for a ride on the 'Speedball Express.' Elliot Spitzer trashed his career and marriage to a beautiful woman because he could not resist the siren songs of the high-class hookers. And then there is David Carradine who died of auto-erotic asphyxiation in Bangkok. Examples are easily multiplied beyond necessity.

Infinitely more foolish is one who sacrifices an eternity of bliss for a lifetime of legitimate mundane satisfactions. One who believes that both spheres are real, and thinks the matter through, ought to understand that the temporal is inferior to the eternal in point of importance. That there are these two spheres is a matter of reasoned faith, not of knowledge. (It is 'metaphysical bluster' to claim to have certain knowledge in this area. One cannot prove God, the soul, or man's eternal destiny. Or so say I; plenty of dogmatists will disagree.)

I therefore make the following suggestion in alleviation of my reader's existential problem. Devote the majority of your time and energy to the quest for the Absolute, but without ignoring the temporal. The quietist must needs be a bit of an activist in a world in which his spiritual life and quest is endangered by the evildoers in the realm of time and change.

For spiritual health a daily partial withdrawal from society is advisable. It needn't be physical: one can be in the world but not of it.

A partial withdrawal can take the form of a holding free of the early morning hours from any contamination by media dreck. Thus no reading of newspapers, no checking of e-mail, no electronics of any sort. Electricity is fine: you don't have to sit in the dark or burn candles. No talking or other socializing. Instead: prayer, meditation, spiritual and philosophical reading and writing, in silence, and alone.

So for a few pre-dawn hours each day you are a part-time monk.

Quietism versus Activism

Substack latest.

Two Types of Contemplative

Those of the first type try to see into eternity by piercing the veil of space and time. They attempt to look beyond this world. The mystics and religious contemplatives are of this type. A second type is content to view the world of space, time, and matter under the aspect of eternity. Not a look beyond the world into eternity, but at it from an eternal point of view. Some philosophers are of this type. One thinks of Spinoza. His amor dei intellectualis is an intellectual love of God or nature, deus sive natura.

The latter is a God's eye view of the world, the former a view of God. The genitive construction is a genitivus objectivus. One naturally thinks of the visio beata of the doctor angelicus.

(There I go alliterating again. A stylistic defect? And peppering one's prose with foreign expressions is considered by some to be stylistically suboptimal, pretentious perhaps.)

Polarization and Flotation in Politics

Can we avoid both polarization and a noncommittal floating above the fray that does not commit to one side or the other? I fear not. Politics is war. You must take a side. You can't play the philosopher on the battlefield. A warrior at war cannot be "a spectator of all time and existence," as noble as such spectatorship is. A warrior who is fully human, however, will know when to put aside his weapons and take up his pen. He will know that, in the end, "The pen is mightier than the sword." But only in the end. Now you are in the field. If you don't survive the fight, there will be no time left for 'penmanship.'

Quietism at War with Activism

EVAGRIOS PONTIKOS enjoins apatheia, a state of deep calm, of tranquillity of mind. Hard to achieve, it is in need of constant protection. Why then do I follow current political and other events? Why do I put myself in a position to have my peace of mind disturbed?

I tell myself to do both: live like a monk while keeping an eye on the world. But experience suggests, if it does not conclusively show, that the ideal is unattainable. An ideal unattainable by me cannot be an ideal for me. A valued conservative friend of mine told me that he doesn't watch conservative television because it makes him angry. So I explained my ideal to him: stay informed while retaining one's equanimity. But in all honesty it is very difficult and I often fail to pull it off. It seems entirely fitting to be angered by the outrages of the Left.

If I cannot productively blend quietism and activism, what should I do? For me, full-on activism and the secularism it presupposes would be psychologically impossible. To be wholly consumed by the mundane is a horror to someone of my type. Besides, this world is a vanishing quantity and simply cannot merit the full measure of our concern. Now you either see that or you don't. If you don't, then these ruminations are not for you.

This leaves quietism, the retreat into the inner citadel, the cultivation of one's inner garden, abstention from media dreck, the avoidance of idle talk and empty socializing, together with devotion to spiritual exercises premised on a resolute NO! to the self-evacuation of the self into the world's sensory-social diaspora. One enters upon the quest for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters recognizing that this quest alone can give to human life the meaning that we intuitively feel it must have. One stops living for a future that cannot be one's own future, and is chimerical in any event. One accepts that our earthly tenure is either prelude or pointless.

What speaks against full-on quietism is the fact that our political enemies, totalitarians, will not let us be. They pose an existential threat, one to both our physical and our spiritual lives and their continuance. One could ignore this threat if one knew that God and the soul are real. But we don't know that. At best, it is a reasoned faith and a matter of inquiry.

So what should I do? Perhaps this: let the quietism dominate while keeping an eye on the passing scene.

"You are missing the Boethian Option: ignore the political and devote yourself wholly to the spiritual quest. Withdraw and accept whatever persecution and incarceration should come your way. Did not Boethius write Consolatio Philosophiae in prison? After all, you yourself regularly point out the vanity, transiency, and ultimate nullity of this world of shadows. If the Object of the spiritual quest is real, then these shadowlands are by comparison nothing or next-to nothing. Why keep an eye on, and get activated and upset over, what is next-to-nothing?"

Well, I am no Boethius for starters. We lesser lights and weaker spirits could easily be broken under persecution. A broken soul cannot engage in soul-making. And besides, this passing scene, though ontologically derivative, is not, strictly speaking, nothing. If it were, God created nothing. And why would God incarnate into it if it were not worth saving and we with it?

And so I debate with myself.

………………………………….

Richard Sorabji on Evagrios Pontikus (c. 345–99 anno domini)

The Way Forward

It seems we are condemned helplessly to watch our country be destroyed. The drift of events is ever downward. To turn things around would require something most of don't want to talk about — and for good reason. Angelo Codevilla ends his analysis with talk of "rebuilding the Republic" but he offers no concrete proposals. What he and almost everyone else on our side offers is just more talk, more analysis. Our enemies are impervious to reason and appeals to reason. There can be no reasoned discourse with people who maintain absurdities — e.g., that mathematics is racist — and subvert language with their Orwellian innovations. To attempt to engage with them on the plane of reason in search of the truth is to fail to understand that it is power, not truth that they seek.

So what do you do? You secure your own little space and live the best life you can within it. That's the main thing. Retreat within your physical citadel, but even more importantly, retreat within your inner citadel to cultivate the soil therein. Properly cultivated, it should bring you to the insight that this world is a passing scene, a vanishing quantity, and nothing worthy of the full measure of your love and attention. But we ought not give up on it entirely. We watch and we wait. If there is an opportunity to make a difference, we do so. We may have only one night to spend in this bad inn, but it is a long night, and it is better to be warm than to shiver.

Sebastian Haffner: Totalitarians Intolerant of Private Life

Among the dozen or so books I am currently reading is Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (Picador, 2003). Written in 1939, it was first published in German in 2000. The Third Reich is no more, but the following passage remains highly relevant at a time when the main forms of totalitarianism are Chinese Communism, the hybrid political-religious ideology Islam, and the hard-Leftism of the Democrat Party in the USA:

No, retiring into private life was not an option. However far one retreated, everywhere one was confronted with the very thing one had been fleeing from. I discovered that the Nazi revolution had abolished the old distinction between politics and private life, and that it was quite impossible to treat it merely as a "political event." It took place not only in the sphere of politics but also in each individual private life; it seeped through the walls like a poison gas. If you wanted to evade the gas there was only one option: to remove yourself physically — emigration, Emigration: that meant saying goodbye to the country of one's birth, language, and education and severing all patriotic ties.

In that summer of 1933 [the year Hitler seized power] I was prepared to take even this final step. (219)

Haffner did emigrate, to England, then a free country. But where will we go when the whole world is under the yoke of the 'woke'?

A review of Haffner's book.

Addendum. The totalitarianism of the 20th century was hard: enforced by the threat of the gulag, etc. That of the 21st century, soft. See Rod Dreher, The Coming Social Credit System. Excerpt:

You think it can’t happen here? As I show in the book, Google, Facebook, and other major corporations already collect tons of data from every one of us, based on how we use the Internet and our smartphones. If you have an Alexa, or any other “smart” device in your home, then whether you realize it or not, you have consented to allow all kinds of personal data to be hoovered up by the device and shared with a corporation. The technological capacity already exists in this country. The data are already being collected.

And Covid has pushed the United States much farther down the road to becoming a cashless society. There is an obvious safety-related reason for this. But banks have a vested financial interest in weaning Americans off of cash:

“Big Finance is the key driver moving us to a cashless society,” he said. “You’ll notice banks have been slowly closing branches and ATMs and they’re doing so in an effort to nudge us more toward their digital platforms. This saves them labor, it saves them a lot of real estate costs, and it improves their bottom line.”

What happens when you can’t buy things at stores with cash? It’s already happening now. I’ve been to stores here in Baton Rouge that will only transact business with credit or debit cards, citing Covid, or the inability to make change because of a coin shortage. It’s understandable, but you should be well aware that the move to a cashless society makes each of us completely vulnerable to being shut out of the economy by fiat.

Southern Heritage, American Heritage, Western Heritage

You thought the thugs were out to tear down the first. Then their actions made it clear that American traditions and values as a whole were in their sights. But it goes deeper still: they oppose our entire Judeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman legacy.

And now comes the existential question: are you willing to fight to defend it?

Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!

What from your fathers you received as heir,

Acquire if you would possess it.

(Goethe's Faust, Part I, Night, lines 684-685, tr. W. Kaufmann)

But to possess it, you must be prepared to defend it. Is that a crossbow I see in the picture below?

Is Philosophy Justified in a Time of Crisis?

The country is unraveling, and you sit in your ivory tower pondering arcane questions about time and existence? How is that a justifiable use of your time, energy, and brain power?

Here is my answer. Or rather one of them.

There have always been crises. Human history is just one crisis after another. The 20th Century was a doosy: two world wars, economic depression, the rise of unspeakably evil totalitarian states, genocide, the nuclear annihilation of whole cities, the Cold War that nearly led to World War III (remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962?), and then after the Evil Empire was quashed, the resurrection of radical Islam. I could go on.

Should we conclude that philosophy has never been justified? But then science has never been justified and much of the rest of what we consider high culture. For they have their origin in philosophy.

Perhaps you don't agree with my 'origins' claim. Still, plenty in life is of value regardless of its utility in mitigating whatever crisis happens to be in progress. Or do you think Beethoven should have been a social worker?

And what makes you think that your activism will make a damned bit of difference? The world is a mess; it always has been. You are not going to change it. Live for what is beyond it. Strive for the Higher Things.

But the really fundamental error is to think that philosophy needs justification in terms of something external to it. I demolish this notion with the precision and trenchancy you have come to expect in Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy or the Humanities?

What Can a Sane individual Do in the Present Political Situation?

This is a repost from last November. Given how fast things are unraveling, what I wrote then sounds a bit lame now. Still, I think my suggestions are sound. They are things I do. Whether you should do them is your call.

……………………….

What can an individual do? Not much, but here are some suggestions.

Exercise your rights and in particular your Second Amendment rights; the latter provide the concrete backup to the others. A well-armed populace, feared by the totalitarians, is a strong deterrent without a shot being fired. Money spent on guns, ammo, accessories, and range fees goes to support our cause. Be of good cheer, and hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.

Vote in every election, but never for any Democrat. And don't throw away your vote on third-party losers. The Libertarians are losertarians and the other third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Politically, they are jokes. Politics is a practical business. It's about better or worse, not about perfect or imperfect. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. Make your vote count — not that any one vote counts for much. Thanks to Trump, the Great Clarifier, there are now real choices. The days of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee are over.

Vote with your wallet. Contribute to conservative causes, but never give money to leftist causes, organizations, or publication outlets. Did your alma mater ask for a contribution? "Not one dime until you clean up your act." That's what I tell them. PBS and NPR programming is sometimes surpassingly excellent, but to give money to these left-leaning outfits is inimical to your interests as a conservative. Don't be a fool who empowers his enemies.

Vote with your feet. Do you live in a sanctuary crap hole such as California? Leave. But don't come to Arizona, this rattle-snake infested inferno crawling with gun-toting racists. Keep heading East. Move in with Elizabeth Warren. Her 3.5 million dollar pad near Harvard Square has plenty of room.

Punish any leftist 'friends' you may still have by withdrawing your high-quality friendship from them. Let them experience consequences for their willful self-enstupidation. Ceteris paribus, of course.

Finally, show some civil courage and speak out: blog, facebook, tweet. But temper your rhetoric and don't incite violence. That's what they do (Maxine Waters, for example, hiding behind her Black Privilege.) But if you are young and need gainful employment, be careful, be very careful. Never underestimate the mendacity and viciousness of leftists. To them you are a deplorable 'racist.' Truth and morality are bourgeois fictions to them. Power is what they believe in.

Don't retreat into your private life lest you wake up one morning to find that there is no private life.

In this article, Rod Dreher admits that he has no idea how to go about fighting the 'woke' militants.

The Upside of the Shutdown: A Salutary Slowdown

A strange vibe supervened the other morning during a leisurely meander over the local hills. It was as if the world's volume had been dialed down. Things had become calmer and quieter. Or so it seemed. "An upside of the shutdown," I said to myself.

The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, and hyperkinetic. For any really good reason? What's the rush? Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, thoughtless hustler?

Meditation the same morning was long and unusually peaceful. The mind-works ground to a halt. I did not want to rise from the mat. After a 70-minute session I did. I reckon that fine long sitting had something to do with the dial-down vibe.

I will speculate further on the improvement of the social atmosphere and its causes. There is an analog of contagion in the spread of attitude.

I do not hide from myself the fact that some will die of the Chinese disease and that many, many more will have their lives and livelihoods wrecked by the politically-motivated draconian measures of the overzealous.

But why not appreciate whatever good presents itself in any situation?

The Quietist on the Delights of Escapism

There are the undeniable and readily accessible delights of escapism into scholarship, and science, and research and inquiry of all sorts. When 'reality' becomes too much to bear, what is wrong with retreating into an ivory tower? Who can rightfully begrudge us our right to peace and quiet and happiness?

You say that there are more pressing concerns than the nature and extent of the influence of Avicenna on Aquinas' De Ente et Essentia? No doubt. But do you really believe that your becoming hot and bothered over these 'pressing concerns' will lead to any improvement? Are you sure about that? And isn't your political activism your mode of escape from something or other? I like peace and quiet; you like 'drama' and contention. To each his own.

Thus spoke the quietist.

Should a Philosopher Care about the Political Situation?

It would seem that a "spectator of all time and existence" (Plato, Republic 486a) ought to care inasmuch as his 'telescope' is located in the world, well within range of the agents of the State, the power of which has rarely been limited, and the malevolence of which has too often swamped the good things some states have done. (The State is a necessary evil.) In the 20th century alone, communists murdered some 100 million, destroyed countless churches and other religious edifices, and replaced philosophy with communist ideology.

You say you could still do philosophy in the gulag? Who are you, Boethius? I am no Boethius.

The philosopher here below must needs be a man of action, a fighter with words and weapons, to some extent at least, to defend the precincts within which alone the free life of the mind and spirit can flourish.

Companion post: The Consolations of Philosophy