... and then there are Easters when we get to sing this.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Monday, March 21, 2016
A Tale of Three Appetites
What
I am about to write is, like much of what appears on this blog, hardly
original. The basic points have been
made before; all I am doing is repeating them in the light in which they strike
me. But there can be a value in
reiterating certain ideas, especially when those ideas strike at one of the
particular blindnesses of a given age.
Provided
that he or she is somewhere in or above the middle class, the modern American—probably
the modern European as well—is practically obsessed with excellence of goods
and of bodily health. Perhaps because it
has been so long since the struggle to eat, to live, and to find shelter has
been an urgent and time-consuming pursuit for them—for us—we tend to focus,
sometimes a little too intensely, on the importance of choosing our goods, our
foods, and our exercise routines well.
The
actual dangers inherent in this tendency are matter for another time. Here I will only note that, if one’s life
actually enables an abundance of lifestyle choices, there is certainly
something to be said for making those choices matter. Living intentionally, while it can (like all
other things) become a jealous god, is no bad answer to being saddled with an overabundance
of worldly blessings.
Intentional
living becomes particularly admirable when it takes the form of a choice to
limit consumption. I have made fun elsewhere of Simple Livers, but the joke is a joke
at the expense of those who abuse the concept.
To declare that one will not buy more food or furniture than is
necessary, and that one will be attentive to one’s own sense of “necessary,” constitutes
a laudable decision.
Moreover,
there is a certain broad degree of acceptance, among moderately thoughtful
people at least, that such a decision is laudable. Despite the continued glorification of
consumption across various media (which depend, after all, on consumption for
their survival), most people if pressed will admit that there is something good
about turning down a second piece of cake, or continuing to drive that used car
a little bit longer. They might not make
the same restrained decision themselves, but they can admire those who do (as
well as those who don’t).
This
is all the more striking when one considers the fact that both the desire to
eat and the desire to possess are essential to human life. Without any food at
all, you will die; without some goods (shelter from the weather, a few rags to
cover one’s nakedness) personal long-term survival will not be possible either. Nevertheless, despite the necessity of food
and goods for survival, we admire those who choose less food and fewer goods than
they could easily obtain. The person who
buys only what they need at the grocery store, who never throws food away, who
always takes home a doggie bag, is admitted more than the person who is constantly
having to throw away spoiled food, or who chooses to glut himself on restaurant
meals.
What
is still more striking: we admire those who make a voluntary choice not just to
moderate but to drastically limit their consumption of food and goods. The person who fasts for a political cause,
who chooses to limit their calorie intake to lose weight or sustain their
long-term mental health, who eschews a car, who owns only fifty items—this person
is regarded as practically a secular saint, one to be admired and emulated to
the best of our weak ability.
Once
again, to reiterate: I do not mean to (excessively) mock the secular saint of
restrained consumption. His habits are essentially
Christian, or rather, are those to which Christians should aspire, though he
does not have Christian reasons for the aspiration. His habit of restraint and moderation is, in
its Christian form, the virtue of temperance; and his most drastic limitations will
be associated by the Christian with the special call of the Evangelical
Counsels to holy poverty. Today we are
perhaps more likely to encounter the abstemious urban professional than his
equally moderate foreuncle, the abstemious monk. But the overall human attitude towards
restraint in the areas of food and goods remains the same for us as it was for
the early Christians or the medievals: respect and admiration.
In
one third area, however, previous ages and our own part company
dramatically. On one third appetite we
stand in profound disagreement. That
appetite of course is the appetite for reproduction.
I’ve
chosen to use the term “reproductive appetite” in part because at bottom, that
is what the appetite in question is directed towards. Take the most hardened evolutionary biologist
aside and he will tell you that, while he enjoys his wife’s company for a
variety of reasons, the basic reason for his enjoyment lies in the fact that it
tends to perpetuate the species. On
this, he and the pagan Aristotle and the Christian Aquinas and Pope Francis are
all in agreement.
We
tend, however, not to think of the reproductive appetite as being about
reproduction. There has been a profound
disjunction in modern American society between the desire for physical and
emotional intimacy with another human being, and the species-oriented purpose
of that desire. Of course, people have
always had a tendency to pursue intimacy while attempting to avoid its sometimes
inconvenient by-products.
I.e., children.
But
this tendency seems to have become in recent years the accepted norm. The
attitude which was once the special province of adulterers has become the
standard perspective of your average healthy American boy and girl: It feels good, so why not?
Meanwhile,
while our respect for the actual necessity of the reproductive appetite has
decreased (“Children? Pshaw. We’re overpopulated anyway”), our sense of
the importance of the appetite—which I had better rename “the appetite for
intimacy”—has increased. In fact, our
respect for the appetite for intimacy has grown so great that we can no longer
imagine moderating it, much less limiting it in a drastic way. In fact, we tend to view anyone who dares to
do so as sick.
Think
about it for a moment. Food and goods
are necessary for life. The appetites
for these things are not only good but individually necessary. Nevertheless, we
recognize the moderation of these appetites as an important matter, and give
great respect to those who achieve it.
But the appetite for intimacy? Certainly
it makes life more pleasant if indulged, but it is hardly necessary for individual
survival; literally billions of people who have practiced abstinence or
chastity have lived to tell the tale, and hundreds of millions have died at
ripe old ages without having broken their fast.
And
yet for some—dare I say it—perverse reason, the modern American persists in
thinking of this appetite as the one which may not under any circumstances be moderated
or questioned. Nay, he considers those
who do moderate it as being themselves somehow distorted, ill, or perverted.
Meanwhile,
he eats only sustainably raised goods, donates to the fight against world
hunger, lives car-less in a city loft, and prefers open windows to
air-conditioning.
I
applaud his self-restraint, but I question his consistency.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
If I Were Writing the History of This Year’s Presidential Election
If I had the novelist’s privilege
and somewhat more than the novelist’s usual power, I would be inclined to look
to history for writing the story of this year’s coming election.
Specifically, I would look to
1852, when, on the fifty-third ballot,
the Whig Party—passing over incumbent President Fillmore and the fiery,
principled Daniel Webster—nominated General Winfield Scott, a showy, fussy
military man whose platform ended up being virtually indistinguishable from
that of the Democrats. It didn’t help
that Scott himself was known for being quite antislavery, while the party
platform was pro-slavery, which meant that neither the anti-slavery northern
Whigs nor the pro-slavery southern Whigs could feel happy voting for Scott.
The similarity of platforms led
to a personality-based campaign, low voter turnout, and a landslide win for the
Democratic nominee, Franklin Pierce.
Scott won only four states: Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and
Vermont. Daniel Webster, who had run as
the Union Party candidate when the Whigs failed to nominate him, had died
during the campaign, but nevertheless won significant votes in Georgia and
Massachusetts … which says something about how the voters were feeling about
their choice of Pierce vs. Scott.
For Scott, read Trump; for Pierce
read Clinton; for the Whigs, read the Republicans.
(Personally, in a
Trump/Hillary campaign, I’d feel
strongly tempted to
write in Antonin Scalia.
Heck, what harm could it do?)
By the next presidential
election, in 1856, the dying Whig party held its last convention, where they unanimously
endorsed not a candidate of their own, but the American Party candidate,
Fillmore. The Whig party never regained
its former political clout, and dissolved a few years later—some Whigs from
both geographical sectors had joined the nativist American “Know-Nothing” Party
, while many of the anti-slavery northern Whigs had been instrumental in
creating the new Republican Party.
The Republican Party in 1856 nominated
Frémont, with the slogan “Free speech, free press, free soil, free men, Frémont,
and victory!” The Democrats, having
nominated Buchanan, threatened that a Republican victory might lead to civil
war. Buchanan won, perhaps in part due
to a rumor, started by the American Party and capitalized on by the Democrats,
that Frémont was—horrors!—a closeted Roman Catholic. Significantly, however, Frémont beat Buchanan
in free states, while in the South the campaign became a contest between
Buchanan (D) and Fillmore (A).
In my fantasy world, after the
Republican Party dies in the Trump/Hillary contest, Paul Ryan and a Few Good
Men (and Ladies) would found the Good Young Party (ahem), while the remaining
Republicans would be free to endorse whatever spoiler candidate best represents
their emptiness (Mitt Romney? or is that too unfair, even to Mitt Romney?). The GYP would probably lose the 2020 election,
but it would be a glorious defeat.
In 1860, of course, the
Republicans famously came back with Lincoln, who was seen at the convention as
a moderate, compromise candidate: the front runner, William Seward, was
considered too radical, while Salmon Chase and Edward Bates had made choices
which alienated various segments of the Republican coalition. The party platform notably did not call for
the abolition of slavery, but opposed its extension; abolitionists were angered
by the decisions, and general did not trust Lincoln.
Meanwhile, the Democratic convention
in Charleston was so contested that, after Douglas still failed to gain the
necessary votes for nomination on the fifty-seventh ballot, the party adjourned
without a nominee. Reconvening a month
later, they managed to nominate Douglas—but only after a substantial number of
the most radically pro-slavery delegates had walked out due to disagreements
over the party platform.
Ultimately, of course, Lincoln
won, firmly establishing the Republican Party as the successor to the Whigs;
the South seceded; and the progress of the Civil War led to the Emancipation Proclamation
and eventually to the freeing of all slaves.
Once again in my fantasy world,
the GYP party candidate wins in 2024, and ends up sends a resounding number of
federal programs back to the states during his term (though his campaign
promise was limited to a humble vow to balance the budget).
A part of me (probably the part
Treebeard would label “hasty”) enjoys imagining this all happen. It’s tempting to see, in the current Republican
Party, one that—as the Whigs were—is made up of unsustainable coalitions which
need to be realigned. But even if today’s
Republican coalition is unsustainable (and that diagnosis may be more of a wish
than a fact) there is no guarantee that the results of its dissolution for the
country would be anywhere near as salutary as they (eventually) were in the
nineteenth century. There is no reason,
in other words, to think that a better party might rise out of the ashes. And in fact, there are reasons to assume the
contrary.
For one thing, there were no less
than seven parties in 1852, and the American Party did remarkably well in the
1856 campaign, suggesting that there was already a willingness among Americans
to experiment with voting outside of a two party system. We are not so norm-defiant today: not even
Ross Perot’s spoiler in the 1990s quite reached the epic proportions of the
American Party’s success in the South in the 1850s.
It also doubtless helped the burgeoning
Republican party of 1856 and 1860 that the Democrats, as the Whigs had been,
were increasingly divided over slavery.
But the Democratic party of today—despite punishing “front-runner”
candidates like Hillary with insurgents like Bernie—seems to have no great
difficulty in coming to compromise at the end of the day.
More importantly, whereas the
Whigs were specifically divided over slavery, today the Republican Party is
divided on multiple issues—making it more difficult to create a new emergent
coalition if the party were to break down.
It may be that the cry for a smaller federal government could perform a
similar function to the cry to stop the spread of slavery; but I suspect that such
negative messages, while they can
work, tend to fly better when there is a clear human rights aspect. “Stop spreading slavery!” is (and should be!)
a more effective message than “Stop federal encroachment!”
Moreover, the Democratic Party of
today is not so clearly the enemy when it comes to federal encroachment as
Democratic Party of the 1850s was when it came to slavery. While it is true that most Democrats have hardly
seen a government expansion that they don’t like, it is also true that they
don’t advertise this fact as one of their good qualities. The Democratic Party of the 1850s, however,
were proudly and adamantly pro-slavery.
It’s much easier to critique one’s opponents on the basis of a flaw
which they own than on the basis of a
flaw to which they occasionally coyly admit.
Finally and perhaps most
importantly, there does not seem to be any degree of willingness among the Republican
Party leadership to part ways over the issues that divide the party’s
constituents. Republican voters may be
exercised about immigration, abortion, regulation, failures in education, economic
malaise, the collapse of the family, or what have you; but Republican Party
leaders have shown no interest in leaving the party, as Whig leaders were once
willing to do. The “Tea Party,” while a
valiant effort to start the debate on tired political doctrines afresh, has
largely remained subsumed under the Republican banner (though both the
“establishment” Republicans and the “Tea Party” types remain uncomfortable with
the alliance).
Overall, I think our problem is
that there are so many problems—not
just in American government but in American society—that
hoping for them to be altered by a political realignment—as opposed to good
old-fashioned one-on-one proselytizing by individual citizens amongst their
neighbors—is futile. The society of the
1850s was sick when it came to slavery, and the glaring nature of that abuse is
so great that it is almost impossible to compare to any other matter. But our society is sick on a whole range of
things, most of which (with the possible exception of abortion) are less
obviously evil to many than slavery was.
As I suggested above, there might
be hope for a party or a candidate who, consolidating the various issues facing
the party into what seems to be a major concern of many voters—the excessive expansion
of government power—could simultaneously show that the real and potential
abuses produced by a large federal government are in fact problems on the order
of a grave moral evil. But to
convincingly make such a case to the public at large would demand a level of
rhetorical and dialectical eloquence which no candidate in recent years (no,
not even the Great Communicator) has achieved.
And even if a politician were to
make such a case as well as such a case could possibly be made, it still might
fall on deaf ears. For to argue that the
government is taking away your liberty presupposes that you have some
appreciation of and desire for that liberty; and the love of liberty—as opposed
to the love of license—cannot exist in a soul that does not also possess certain
other qualities. Civic virtue is based
on one’s broader moral health; civic virtues cannot exist in a soul that does
not possess moral virtues.
And our culture has lost the moral
virtues. We lack, rather obviously, the virtues
understood as being “religious” or “theological”: faith, hope, and charity. But we also lack the virtues that Nature
herself cries out to us that we need: the cardinal moral virtues of temperance,
prudence, justice, and fortitude. And we
not only lack these virtues: we do not always even admire them anymore. Until
that admiration, at least, is restored, I see no particular reason to look
forward to a change in our political structure, in the vain hope that it might
prove more salutary for our societal health than current arrangements.
“Our Constitution was
made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate
to the government of any other.”—John Adams.
Labels:
abortion/bc,
conservatism,
history,
IfOnly,
politics
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Wumpick and the Angels of the Simple Life
Yes, the simple life is an
excellent opportunity—like Gnosticism in the Ancient World and Manicheism in
the Dark Ages—to practice that time-honored bait-and-switch in which we teach
men to think of themselves as angels, only to reveal the truth to them too
late. You may recall some of Screwtape’s
classic advice on using human chastity: let them think they’re above it all,
develop sense of pride about where they stand as opposed to ordinary people,
and then, when they’ve become just complacent enough to imagine that they’ve
developed some kind of virtue in the area, shoot off a volley of your best
imagery and watch the fireworks go.
Certainly, you can approach the matter of simple living in the same way.
But the appetite for possessions,
unlike the reproductive drive and the desire for nourishment, does not provoke
the same level of visceral disgust in human beings as gluttony and
promiscuity. Because it is more closely
connected to their rational than their animal natures, it is difficult for even
the most excessive manifestations of the appetite to become so obviously
subhuman. Exceptions exist, of course—the
extremes of hoarding reported by American TV, or the excesses of certain public
personalities in the matter of statuary and gold leafing may, perhaps, trigger
something like the instinctive revulsion that the refined man feels at seeing another
man “pig out”; but by and large it is far easier to tempt a person to despair
after an impulse towards gluttony or unchastity than after an impulse buy.
On the whole then, I do not think
the sudden attack is helpful against
those who practice Simple Living—in which group I include everyone from the
strictest minimalist to the casual recycler. Anyone who sees good in using or wasting little
is a potential target: one has only to take the good of frugality and make it
contrastive. From Mrs. DeForest wanting
to leave her grandchildren a healthy planet to Mrs. DeForest looking down on
Mrs. Frimp for putting bottles in the wrong receptacle is one short step for
mankind, one great leap for Our Father Below.
This is the kind of thing that the virtue Simple Living most naturally
lends itself too: the minor sins of vanity and uncharitability which, taken to
their natural conclusion, can eat up a lifetime of good works like a carpet of
ivy on a crumbling brick wall.
It is also possible, of course,
to simultaneously make the obvert choice of Simple(r) Living a shield under
which the native human condition of greed can take cover. Is it possible, you ask, for someone who owns
only fifty items in his Spartan apartment to be greedy? Oh, Wumpick, it is. Do you recall a certain man, known for his
singularly uninteresting clothing and his habit of emblazoning every product
his company produced with a faux-humble lowercase “i”, whose once-bare
apartment was adorned by a Tiffany lamp?
A single necessary item can become an object of great indulgence for
those who live simply. And of course,
this kind of hypocrisy is not limited to secular people: one recalls the nun
whose vow of poverty forbade her to use more than one pin, but who confessed guiltily
to her superior that she had been keeping a second one. Her conscience was bothered. But there is no reason that the ordinary
Simple Liver’s should be.
An additional use of Simple
Living is of course as an incentive to pride.
Vanity, and uncharitable comparisons to one’s neighbors, I have already
mentioned. But pride—not the desire to
be seen as better, but the deep-seated belief, needing no assurance, that one is better than, indeed on a whole
different level from other people—that
should be the real goal of a tempter whose patient shows an inclination to the
Simple Life. Comparisons will be
necessary; fortunately, as I suggested in my
last letter, many are already beginning
to be culturally established. A previous
generation, for example, would simply have thought Gothic Cathedrals in bad
taste, or (if they belonged to the stricter sort of Puritanism) said that it
was a wicked thing that the money wasn’t rather given to the poor. But our simple secularists see the very act
of living well as being something to be ashamed of. Take care that they compare that living well
to their well-living, and do not notice the similarities. Like Mrs. DeForest, let them begin by
imagining that they are doing this for others, but do not let them think about
it too much. They know intellectually that
no amount of abstemiousness on their part will—in and of itself—guarantee a bowl of rice for one more child; do
not let them ask what would. If the
question crosses their mind, let the little well of warm emotions radiate
briefly—they are thinking of others, after all!—before dissipating it quickly
with a question about whether Uber or Zipcars are less extravagant. And of course, make sure that they determine
the answer through extensive calculations leading to an arbitrary and contingent
conclusion which no amount of argument with their friends can shake. Let them think that they have mastered the
art of simplicity; purified their nature to the point of an almost angelic
abstemiousness.
For they do aspire to be like
angels, Wumpick—make no mistake about that.
That is what lies at the root of this attraction to simplicity after all,
just as it lies at the root of the love of mammon. Both the outrageously wealthy and the
unbearably simple are after one thing: autonomy. No human being, of course, can ever really be
autonomous. But we can tease them with
the prospect, encouraging them as they divest (or increase) themselves one good
at a time to think with each object that they are becoming more and more independent
from the world and the flesh. What a surprise
it will be to learn, finally, that all the time their “autonomy” was a mere
pale and impotent emulation of the autonomy of that third and greatest enemy
against whom the old monks, those earlier and more dangerous Simple Livers, so
carefully guarded themselves.
Then, if you like, there will be
despair—not the despair of having sinned through weakness against the god
Simplicity that they worshiped, but the despair of knowing that, in the end,
no human being is worthy or capable of measuring up to the glorious
self-sufficiency of Our Father Below.
Your affectionate uncle,
Slangrine
Labels:
freedom,
man and beast,
religion,
satire/parody,
TheSlangrineLetters
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