Category: Sage Advice

The Beauty of the Solitary Life

Thomas Merton, The Journals, vol. 6, 24 June 1966, p. 344: "The beauty of the solitary life . . . is that you can throw away all the masks and forget them until you return among people."

For, as one of my aphorisms has it, "The step into the social is by dissimulation."

Before I quit my cell, I put on my face, don my mask, go gray, and try not to appear too intense.

De-Dox Your Glove Box!

And what might I mean by that?

I mean remove documents from your glove compartment or other easily accessible areas in your vehicle wherein it would be unwise to carry them given the spike in crime of all sorts caused by such Democrat policies as defunding the police and eliminating cash bail. I count four levels of foolishness in decreasing levels of inadvisability:

1) Carrying your driver's license in the glove box.

2) Carrying the title to the vehicle in the glove box.

3) Carrying the vehicle registration in the glove box.

4) Carrying insurance cards in the glove box.

Since smash and grab is quick and easy and on the rise, the wise do not leave personal information easy of access in their vehicles. (You might want to look into installing a serious console or under-seat lock box.) One scenario goes like this: the thug learns your address and swipes your garage door opener. Now they have easy access to your garage and its contents,  and if you are foolish enough to leave the door to your domicile unlocked, access to your house and its contents including wife and children.

Reader Asks: What Should I Read?

Nathaniel T. writes,

In the new year, I'm committing to some more regular reading habits. 
 
What serious books would you recommend to someone outside academia who has about half an hour uninterrupted in the morning to read, three times a week? How about a list that would last that person a year? 
 
Here are some additional parameters that might aid in your selection:
 
I went to St. John's College in Annapolis, so I've read many of the "greats" in whole or in part, at least once. I have kept up some serious reading since my graduation in 2012, just irregularly. 
I already pray and read the New Testament and spiritual reading daily. 
 
Thanks for your insight and writing!
 
The best advice I could give anyone  with your background who is committed to the life of the mind is to buy and study a copy of A. G. Sertillanges, O. P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. He explains how to proceed.  It is a classic. He draws upon Aquinas and upon Alphonse Gratry, of whom C. S. Peirce had a very high opinion. So I also recommend Gratry's Logic if you can find a copy. Reference here.
 
I hesitate to offer a list of books on particular topics given the constraints on your time.  But here are a couple that are  short, very clear, and unusually thought-provoking: Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (make sure to get the Sea Harp Press edition which contains an introduction by C. S. Lewis); Romano Guardini, Jesus Christus (anything by Guardini is worth reading).
 
If perchance you are interested mystical theology, and have already read the great Spanish mystics, Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Avila, and have the stamina for a long slog, then I recommend Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Theology. Reference and notes here.
 
For more suggestions see my Bibliophilia category.
 
Combox open if anyone has any recommendations.
 
By the way, has St. John's College, Annapolis gone 'woke'?  

2024 and Trump sub specie aeternitatis

First-rate political analysis by DiploMad 2.0. (HT: Bill Keezer)

But there is little to be hopeful or happy about this New Year. 2023 is likely to be worse than the last three.  You are well-advised to seek your happiness within.  Not that one should withdraw from the fray entirely. Fight on, but not at the expense of your tranquillitas animi.  For the sake of sanity, dial back your intake of media dreck, 'legacy' and 'social.'  This world is a passing scene and a vanishing quantity. And you with it.  Take the current slide into the abyss as a warm invitation to seek out the really real (ὄντως ὄν) before it's too late.

Another Reason to Limit Socializing

Avoid unnecessary socializing lest you inadvertently reveal what it would be imprudent to reveal. As we sink into a Sino-style surveillance state, it is probably best for most of you, especially the young, to lay low and go gray. I've made mine so I run less of a risk in speaking my mind. The little civil courage I display I cannot in good conscience demand of others who are not as well-positioned and have much more to lose. 

 

Maxims and Meta-Maxims

1) Live now: resist the tendency to bring the past into the present.

2) Beware of viewing yourself through the belittling eyes of others.

3) Avoid negative and weakening thoughts.

4) Avoid comparisons with others.

5) Keep socializing to the minimum necessary to maintain one's sanity and humanity.

6) Do not associate with those beneath you except as duty and necessity require.

7) Guard the mind, the tongue, the heart.

8) Abide in the here, the now, the self.

9) Aspire.

10 Strive and persevere.

11) Begin the day with a review of these and other maxims.

12) Maxims ought to be part of one's 'everyday carry.' Don't leave home without them.

13) Age quod agis!

14) Indulgence weakens; resistance strengthens.

15) Coin new maxims.

16) Carpe diem et noctem! 

Downplay Both

If you downplay your wins, downplay your losses. The pain of defeat is worse than the pleasure of victory is good. But you have the power  to regard them as equal. In some measure the pain of loss can be lessened. The Stoic therapy is no cure, but it is a palliative. If our predicament is a splitting headache, said therapy is a couple of aspirin. Take it and them for what they are worth.

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.  

It is dangerous to assume that others are like we are.  (I am thinking right now of a very loving and lovable female neighbor  who makes the dangerous assumption: she has a 'Coexist' sticker affixed to her bumper.)

Liberal 'projectionism' — to give it a name — can get your irenic self killed.

Coexist sticker

As desirable a desideratum as peaceful coexistence is, it is inconsistent with totalitarian systems. This is why communism and Christianity cannot coexist assuming that they remain true to their defining principles.  (Or at least they cannot coexist in one geographical area over the long term.) They are mutually exclusive worldviews. And of course they are not just comprehensive views of the world and the people in it, but practical systems of prescriptions and proscriptions oriented toward the guidance of human action.  The actional side is paramount in both systems. Old Karl said that the philosophers had variously interpreted the world when the point was to change it. (Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach).  A serious Christian could say that the philosophers had variously theorized and speculated when the unum necessarium was the salvation of one's immortal soul.  "For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?" (Matthew 16-26)  A library of learned disquisitions on the nature of the soul is of no avail if one in the end suffers its loss.

Christianity and Islam are also quite obviously mutually exclusive on both  doctrinal and  practical planes. Note that both in their ideological purity are totalitarian. (Christianity in the West has of course been liberalized to a great extent and is thus no longer ideologically pure.) The two in their pure forms make a total claim on the lives of their adherents. They cannot peacefully coexist in the same geographical area over the long term. The Muslim says to the infidel: either convert to the truth faith, or accept dhimmitude, or be put to the sword. That, for a Christian, is indeed a trilemma: you will be impaled on one of three horns, but you are free to choose which one. 

Can classical liberalism, the touchstone of which is toleration, coexist with any totalitarian ideology, religious or secular? No again. The classical liberal can and will tolerate any ideology as long as it respects the principle of toleration; it cannot, however, tolerate the rejection of this very principle, the principle that defines it. The rub, for the totalitarian, is that if he accepts the principle of toleration, he can no longer remain totalitarian: he will have to adjust his tenets in various ways. Classical liberalism and totalitarian systems are mutually exclusive. 

So where does this leave us? There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism.  For classical liberalism alone is tolerant of deep differences and is alone respectful of our equally deep ignorance of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  Why must we be tolerant? Because we do not know. The classical liberal  is keenly aware of the evil in the human heart and of the necessity of limited government and dispersed power. So he is justified in making war against fanaticism, onesidedness, and totalitarian systems of government whether theocratic or 'leftocratic.'  It would not be a war of extermination but one of limitation. It would also be limited to one's geographical area and not promoted abroad to impose the values of classical liberalism on the benighted tribalists of the Middle East and elsewhere.

Finally, can American conservatism and the ideology of the Democrat Party in its contemporary incarnation peacefully coexist? Obviously not, which is why there is a battle for the soul of America. Either we defeat the totalitarian Left or we face a nasty trilemmatic trident: acquiesce and convert; or accept dhimmitude; or ne cancelled in one livelihood and then eventually in one's life.

Half-Way Cultural Appropriation

You appropriate our science and technology, why not then appropriate the values, virtues, attitudes, and behaviors that led to the science and technology? Here are some of them: hard work, self-control, self-knowledge, deferral of gratification, focus, protracted study, objectivity, rational thinking, coherent speech, respect for legitimate authorities, respect for elders, and punctuality.
 
Why the half-way cultural appropriation? Go all the way, and you will benefit yourself enormously.
 
There is nothing 'white' about the above values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors. After all, Asians implement them as well as Caucasians, if not better. The values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors, are normatively universal and good for everyone. No race or ethnicity owns them. They are common goods.