#benedict option

[arcticdementor]

I find myself referencing Battletech more often in discussions these days; at least partially due to the fact that it contains not one, but two different examples of a "Benedict option" gone wrong?

You think you're going to be Hari Seldon? Good luck not ending up as Jerome Blake, or worse, Aleksandr Kerensky, instead.

[eternal-echoes]

"Too many Christians have decided that the world is bad …"

There is no winning with a message like that, but 'The Benedict Option' has some worthwhile tips for how to do more than virtue-signal in a world hungry for the good

The virtues of our times should be low-hanging fruit for Christians. Consider:

Today, people care a lot about serving the weak and marginalized. Surely Christian principles about the infinite dignity of every human being can find good soil here.

Today’s secularists want to unite the whole world, regardless of race or economic status. There is one place that actually already does this: The Catholic Church. Let’s propose it.

People hunger for beauty — and the culture works hard to deliver it in every media imaginable. Even our video games are beautiful. Let’s re-introduce people to the source of the unlimited beauty they hunger for.

And why not, instead of spelling out how formidable the intellectual climate is, start reminding ourselves how weak it is?

Secularism is a culture of death that refuses to reproduce. That means self-destruction.

Secularism is built on science — but it refuses to recognize the humanity of the unborn or the chromosomal facts of life. It has turned against science. It is undermining its own foundations.

Secularism prides itself on tolerance and free speech, but increasingly rejects both in favor of a hyper-sensitive new censorship based on political correctness. This fails its own standards.

[myvinyllove]

Just got home from an Orthodox + Catholic Conference!

And I’m feeling so encouraged. Eastern Christian spirituality is an element that the world sorely needs right now. It’s the beautiful marriage of mystery and common sense. Glory to Jesus Christ.

Not to mention my husband keeps re-stealing my heart. I love seeing him take care of me, our babies and put effort into seeking Christ. Hard working and faithful men are out there!

[judica-me]

I finished reading The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. It’ll take me a while to digest my thoughts on it but overall I came out with a more positive opinion of it than I had initially. 

My biggest issue is somewhat with the tone of the book. Dreher uses a lot of flood and storm imagery, that there are worse days coming. The book tries to convey a sense of dread.

While things aren’t great, I also see this as some of the best days ever for traditional Catholics. We recognize that there is a serious danger in the convulsing secular liberal order. More importantly, other people see it too! The erosion of the thin veneer of cultural Christianity on the west means there no longer an illusion of everything being fine. There is now even greater intellectual space for us to operate.

We have opportunities that would not have been possible for us 20 years ago and now the time is just right for us to reassert ourselves within Catholicism.

[arcticdementor]

I’ve asked this elsewhere on the web years ago, but why is it that “intentional communities” seem almost entirely left-wing (see here)? Is it really just that it’s only an “intentional community” when secular (or perhaps left/liberal religious), but if it’s religious, it’s instead a “cult compound”? Or is their some other source of the asymmetry? Perhaps that, as one person proposed, “Three letter agencies really don’t like it when people on the right go innawoods en masse… Left wing groups don’t actually oppose the state, more often they’re the testbeds for FedGov’s next progressive push.”

[arcticdementor]

You might want to look at the Amish model. They lose about ten percent of each generation and still have a population doubling time of about twenty years. Part of that seems to be having a pretty gloomy picture of the “English” (non-Amish) life style, rather like the view that some leftists have of capitalism–everyone doing soul killing jobs to make money to keep up with the Joneses.

David Friedman

[arcticdementor]

Incels & Socialism

A demoralized Catholic conservative opens his mind to leftism

A comment from a reader:

As a millenial male whose conservative Catholic identity is currently breaking away piece by piece, I take interest in this issue. For an involuntarily celibate humanities casualty in the economic wasteland of the California interior, making below minimum wage online and being driven to mass by his parents, the entire Benedict Option debate seems like the luxury of those who can afford to form families to protect.

I became Catholic three years ago. I quickly gravitated to the Latin mass because I love the exotic beauty of the language and the sacredness of the music. But over time I realized that in both pre- and post-VII Catholic communities, the entire culture of the faith is oriented around three groups: priests, religious, and married parents. I don’t have a vocation to be a priest (and in any case take antidepressants), I can’t join a monastery because of my student loan debt, and I lack the sexual-economic marketability to become a parent. The plight of the involuntarily single male is overlooked in the Catholic discourse; it’s viewed as an unnatural state, a peculiarity. The church spends tremendous energy advocating the unborn and extolling family life, but does little to actually promote family formation.

Where is the church helping me find a job and a mate? I sympathize with gainfully employed family men such as Ahmari and French and their desire to preserve Christian family values, but what do Christian family values mean to me if I am shut out from family life, perhaps permanently? Traditionalist conservatives only seem to care about people with families. I know this isn’t actually the case, but it is true that their discourse is heavily accented on those with the economic fortuity of having a family.

I haven’t gone to church in three weeks. The underlying cause of my disillusionment was the frustration described above, but it was precipitated by my disgust with the church’s position on abortion in case of maternal life endangerment, which I could no longer accept after Alabama included this exception in its law. I was also embittered by the plight of a friend whose wife divorced him against his will; if he had had a Catholic wedding, the church would say tough luck, he can’t remarry.

No longer keeping the faith, I am tempted to affiliate myself with socialism. The techno-plutocracy isn’t going to get any more humane as the march of automation concentrates the wealth and the jobs in the hands of ever fewer people. I am a default conservative on marriage, abortion, and immigration, but I am willing to overlook these issues if the Sanderses and Ocasio-Cortezes of Congress are truly prepared to make life more dignified for unemployed and underemployed young people.

Rod, I have great respect for you and enjoy your blog, so please don’t simply dismiss this comment as incel raving. You recently wrote a very respectful and compassionate post about a young conservative who embraced Islam. Please show the same compassion for young conservatives tempted by socialism.

I’m not going to make fun of this guy. He’s desperate, and his desperation is not something to mock. When I was researching the Sovietization of Eastern Europe earlier this year, I discovered that the mass loneliness, displacement, and aimlessness of young men in postwar Eastern Europe played a significant role in the establishment of Communism there. Of course the Red Army played the largest role, but there were people who were hungry for what Communism had to offer, because everything was broken, and they longed for solidarity and stability.

[arcticdementor]

Productivity is not an issue.  In a wealthy society, a man could easily buy enough food and shelter for taking care of umpteen children, but he cannot actually take care of umpteen children. Observing variations in total fertility rate over different regions and different times, we see that even in very poor societies, boom or bust, war or peace, wealth or poverty, make very little difference to the total fertility rate. The only thing that matters is female emancipation.

…

Poolside is defect/defect equilibrium, the battle of the sexes.  Difficult to reproduce poolside, difficult to have a family, difficult to have an old age surrounded by children and grandchildren.  The only way to end the war is male victory, followed by some alarmingly drastic coercion.  I base this on what happened on the shore of Port Jackson, when they were working with female material far more favorable than that which we have, and were initially paralyzed because reluctant to do what proved necessary, which is presumably what fathers had been doing behind the scenes.

Obviously anyone who tries what was tried on the shores of Port Jackson is not going to be left alone by progressives.

…

When Black Mohammedans in the middle of Africa try overtly coercive methods similar to those used on the shores of Port Jackson, the Cathedral drones them.