Category: Activism and Quietism
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Engagement with Equanimity
Can you engage with the political while retaining peace of mind? If not, avoid politics. The monkish virtues are easy to cultivate and practice in the monastery. The trick, however, is to practice them in the world — where they are needed.
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In the Face of Totalitarians
In the face of totalitarians one cannot retreat into one's private life for they, being totalitarians, won't allow any private life. So the conservative is forced willy-nilly to become an activist against his natural tendency. He must draw a line in the sand and say "This far but no farther." A minor example. My friends Peter…
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Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It
Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. (I mean 'thinking' in a very broad sense that embraces all forms of intentionality as well as meditative non-thinking.) …
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The Case of Morris Starsky
Quite by chance this morning I stumbled upon materials relating to one Morris Starsky, a professor of philosophy at Arizona State University who was fired from a tenured position for his political views in 1970. Here is the Wikipedia article; here is something from the Phoenix New Times; this is from The Militant. All of…
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Why We Can’t Ignore Politics
Thomas Mann, Diaries 1918-1939, entry of August 5, 1934: A cynical egotism, a selfish limitation of concern to one's personal welfare and one's reasonable survival in the face of the headstrong and voluptuous madness of 'history' is amply justified. One is a fool to take politics seriously, to care about it, to sacrifice one's…
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The Upside of the Downturn
Written a few years ago, this entry from the old blog merits reposting. As the economy stumbles, CD rates tumble, the stock market falters, gas prices soar, and foreclosures mount, I look at the bright side: less development, fewer sales of State Trust Lands, less destruction of desert and wildlife habitat. A temporary respite from…
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Meditation Better Than Travel
It is better to dive below the surface of consciousness than to move around on the surface of the earth.
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Dis-tracted
We are pulled towards the world, towards property, progeny, position, power, popularity, pleasure. But in some of us the pull toward the spirit is stronger and will triumph — in the end. Meanwhile we are pulled apart, dis-tracted, torn between lust for the world and love of the spirit. This is 'par for the course'…
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Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien
Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good." Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain. Politics is a practical business. It…
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Political Discourse as Unavoidably Polemical: the Converse Clausewitz Principle
A regular reader writes: I would urge some caution withyour recent political cartoon. This is only because you may unjustly be treated with less seriousness than your blog deserves if someone wants to peg you in a certain way. I'm certainly not being PC or suggesting that political satire is problematic — it's primarily a…
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Conservative Activism, the Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy
'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it. Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage. But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks…
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In Praise of the Useless
Morris R. Cohen, A Preface to Logic (Dover, 1977, originally published in 1944), p. 186, emphasis added: It would certainly be absurd to suppose that the appreciation of art should justify itself by practical applications. If the vision of beauty is its own excuse for being, why should not the vision of truth be so…
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Should We Just Tend Our Private Gardens?
From Thomas Mann's Diaries 1918-1939, entry of August 5, 1934: A cynical egotism, a selfish limitation of concern to one's personal welfare and one's reasonable survival in the face of the headstrong and voluptuous madness of 'history' is amply justified. One is a fool to take politics seriously, to care about it, to sacrifice one's…