My opposition to this war, to all wars, must not become a kind of mantra, a certificate of good citizenship for intellectuals in need of publicity, who all seek the anointing of the moralising doxa. In repeating common places, we contribute absolutely nothing and, on the contrary, entrench a Manichean vision that prevents any debate and understanding of this tragedy.
Read More… there is no way to proceed to an analysis of what the meaning of Russia’s challenge to ‘the West’ means if we don’t first attempt some assessment of what is meant, today, by ‘the [liberal] West’.
Read More… Geo-politics, taken alone and by itself, is brute force. An ideal, taken alone and by itself, is unreal. Might it not be the case that the reality of any cultural and civilizational ideal at the level of a nation state depends on its proper relation with the geo-political; and that this complex interdependency, indeed, is what makes possible a civilization’s ideal-real -- as opposed to its purely imaginary, or purely brutal – character?
Read More… Recent warnings from repentant social media entrepreneurs Chamath Palihapitiya and Sean Parker have done nothing but affirm Berdyaev’s observation, and the situation must now be far worse than he ever could have imagined. Such a dehumanized world, according to Berdyaev, “puts man under the sign of demonic possession and loss of balance.” As we have become all too aware, both capitalism and communism participate in this dehumanization, and no existent political structures offer an alternative. “The world threatens to become an organized and technicized chaos in which only the most terrible forms of idolatry and demon-worship can live.”
Read MoreI am a writer. I know how to construct stories. I know what makes them succeed or fail, and I have a nose for when a story does not hang together. The covid Narrative is just such a story. It doesn’t fit together, even on its own terms. Something is wrong. The surface tale does not reflect what lies beneath. And what lies beneath is what interests me now.
Read MoreA vaccine of this type is not, properly speaking, an alternative to lockdowns and restrictive measures; rather, it is the ideal instantiation of the anthropology underlying these very same lockdowns and allied restrictive measures. It is the most powerful weapon in modern medicine’s “war against the virus,” in the context of modern man’s “war against suffering and death.”
Read More