Alan Jacobs

Against Champagne Socialists:

The reality is that for many people, publicly expressing ideology is not about trying to say what's right and wrong; it's about trying to look good to others. It's moral masturbation, not moral theory. Rather than helping others — which might cost them something! — they advocate helping others. Rather than ameliorating some of the bad effects of injustice — which might cost them something! — they advocate for justice. They then consume the warm glow of cheap altruism and earn the admiration of like-minded peers, all while living a self-centered luxury lifestyle.

The George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen once noted that in the United States, cities' politics and behavior seem to be at odds. Egalitarian cities with fairly equal distributions of income tend to have a conservative ethos, while cities that have massive disparities in wealth and that shower rewards upon high-status people — such as Los Angeles and New York — tend to have left-wing and egalitarian ideologies. One possibility is that wearing a left-wing ideology is a sort of cover for living a right-wing life. Perhaps this partly explains why elite universities are so left-wing. They sell elite status, but they cover this up with incessant praise of social justice. It could be that Harvard is a right-wing institution that undermines social justice, but if it never stops talking about equality, maybe you won't notice.

We found our old friend Nelson! – missing for many years. (Long ago a friend from South Africa gave him to us.)

Chilly and lovely morning in the neighborhood today.

William Deresiewicz:

No, secularism cannot reassure us that the universe is governed by a benevolent deity, or that the wicked will be punished and the good rewarded, or that our souls will be clasped after death in the bosom of Abraham. But in leaving us to our devices, it does something better, because it does something truer. It forces us into the search: for truth, for beauty, for justice. 

The notion that secularism forces some unspecified “us” into searching for truth, beauty, and justice is a purely religious notion; and a more spectacular example of wishful thinking than any other religion has ever managed to put forth. 

Rowan Williams:

Our ancestors, right up to the modern age, knew they were fragile. A brief period of dazzling technological achievement combined with the absence of any major global war produced the belief that fragility was on the retreat and that making our global environment lastingly secure or controllable was within reach. But the same technical achievements that had generated this belief turned out to be among the major destabilising influences in the material environment. And the absence of major global conflict sat alongside the proliferation of bitter and vicious local struggles, often civil wars that trailed on for decades. But perhaps it is only in the past two decades that we have quite caught up with the realisation that global crises are indifferent to national boundaries, political convictions and economic performance. The vulnerability cannot be neatly cordoned off.

For the foreseeable future, we shall have to get used to this fragility; and we are going to need considerable imaginative resources to cope with it. In the past, people have found resources like this in art and religion. Today it is crucial to learn to see the sciences as a resource and not a threat or a rival to what these older elements offer. It is more than high time to forget the phoney war between faith and science or art and technology.

I don’t often read the New York Times, but when I do, I prefer to use lynx.

Karth Barth, in a 1934 talk: 

For what we have experienced in Germany during these latter days — this remarkable apostasy of the Church to nationalism, and I am sure that every one of you is horrified and says in his heart: I thank thee, God, that I am not a German Christian! — I assure you that it will be the end of your road, too. It has its beginning with “Christian life” and ends in paganism. For, if you once admit, “Not only God but I also,” and if your heart is with the latter — and friends, that’s where you have it! — there is no stopping it. Let me assure you that there are many sincere and very lovely people among the German Christians. But it did not save them falling prey to this error.

Let me warn you now. If you make a start with “God and…” you are opening the doors to every demon….

In Germany we have learned by experience that the one thing that offered a chance to face the real enemy and refuse his claim was the simple message: God is the only Helper! It was the simple Either-Or which was refused a while ago. Learn in time what may here be learned. You are still soldiers in the barracks. Real firing has not yet begun for you. Some day you may be called to the front line. Perhaps there you will remember our discussion. You may then gain a better understanding of what you do not seem to be able to grasp today. One-sidedness will be your only chance.

Later they “affirmed to the last that if they had been deceived, the Lord himself was their deceiver.” Let the reader understand.

In his great essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke argues that proverbs may be described as a kind of purposeful realism (my phrase, not his):

Here there is no “realism for its own sake.” There is realism for promise, admonition, solace, vengeance, foretelling, instruction, charting, all for the direct bearing that such acts have upon matters of welfare.

Then Burke suggests: What happens if we think of all literature that way? “Proverbs are strategies for dealing with situations” – maybe all works of literary art do the same, just in different and more complex ways. If so, you need sociological categories for thinking about literature:

What would such sociological categories be like? They would consider works of art, I think, as strategies for selecting enemies and allies, for socializing losses, for warding off evil eye, for purification, propitiation, and desanctification, consolation and vengeance, admonition and exhortation, implicit commands or instructions of one sort or another. Art forms like “tragedy” or “comedy” or “satire” would be treated as equipment for living, that size up situations in various ways and in keeping with correspondingly various attitudes. The typical ingredients of such forms would be sought. Their relation to typical situations would be stressed. Their comparative values would be considered, with the intention of formulating a “strategy of strategies,” the “over-all” strategy obtained by inspection of the lot.

What Burke calls “the ‘over-all’ strategy” might be a synonym for the “general theory” I described, with reservations, in a recent post. But let’s set that aside for now, and think about equipment.

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes,

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

This is an astonishingly rich passage, but let’s begin exploring it by looking at one phrase: “to equip the saints.” The relevant word there, katartismon (καταρτισμὸν), appears in this one biblical location only, but it’s related to a whole complex of words that are dispersed throughout the letters of the New Testament. You’ll probably recognize the two parts: kat (down) and artisimon (shaped, formed, adjusted). The meaning is “adjusted just so” or “shaped just right” – which is why you sometimes see it translated “perfected,” though I don’t prefer that meaning. Throughout ancient Greek you see versions of this concept:

• ἐναραρίσκω (to fit or fasten in, to be fitted in)
• ἐπαραρίσκω (to fit to or upon, fasten to, to fit tight or exactly)
• προσαραρίσκω (to fit to, to be fitted to, firmly fitted)
• συναραρίσκω (to join together, to hang together)

The core idea is that of good workmanship, of something well-crafted. Closely related (thematically though not etymologically) is a passage from earlier in the letter to the Ephesians in which Paul says that we are the craftwork of God – esmen poiēma ktisthentes en Christō lēsou epi ergois agathois – poems made in Christ Jesus for good works.

The particular craft that seems to be contextually lurking behind all these terms is carpentry, and more specifically joinery – making the joints snug and tight and the surfaces smooth, so that the work thus crafted will hold together when it’s stressed or buffeted. That said, in the long passage quoted above Paul moves easily from the image of a well-made case to the image of a well-knitted body – because a body, being organic, will be not just soundly made but also capable of increasingly varied and challenging actions. A healthy body is more capable and adaptable than a well-crafted case because it can grow in size and strength, and improve in dexterity. (A body as old and decrepit as mine can still learn a new trick or two; even now I can through exercise increase not just my muscular power but even the density and strength of my bones.)

Still, it’s impossible not to remember that the art or craft in which the young Jesus was trained was that of a builder, a tekton.

To be equipped, then, in Paul’s sense, is not a matter of “the things we carry” but rather the formation we have undergone. (The German word Bildung doesn’t refer to building, rather to imaging — Bild means image — but the correspondence of the two words is a lovely accident.) Christian formation is equipment not in the sense of having the right tools but rather of being properly built, which means, chiefly, having the right habits – but no: the right habitus. The whole panoply of customary actions and perceptions located in one’s body, and one’s mind, and one’s social surround. (My brothers and sisters in Christ are part of my habitus.)

To return to Kenneth Burke: What if we were to think of literature and the other arts as a kind of repository of habitus, a motley collection of practices and strategies? “Motley” because we can never adopt them simply and straightforwardly – we have to accept the inevitability of bricolage. But still: experiences not just to admire or appreciate but to use. Edward Mendelson’s idea of “literature as a special form of intimacy” seems relevant here – literature, and the other arts, as equipment for living, equipment shared by fallen mortals, thinking reeds, puzzled people in the process of being formed. An improvised sociology for wayfarers.

In Ozu’s late film Good Morning, the primary engine of conflict, which is also to say the primary engine of story, is the desire of two boys for a television. They have been forbidden to watch sumo wrestling, their great passion, in the house of some neighbors because said neighbors are thought to be overly Western and (ergo) morally unreliable. So the children demand that their parents buy them their own TV. (One common theme in Ozu’s films is the disobedience of children and a resulting annoyance in parents which rarely leads to any real discipline.) When the children persist in complaining about the lack of a television, their father tells them to shut up. He says they yammer on. But the children, reasonably enough, reply that it is the parents who yammer on, that it is in fact characteristic of adulthood to persist hour after hour in meaningless verbiage. Good morning, good evening, how are you, isn’t it a nice day, lovely weather we’re having, and so on ad nauseam. (The younger boy’s way of picking up on this adult habit is fun: When leaving someone’s house he chirps, in English, “I love you!”) In order to make their point, they decide to go on a language strike: they refuse to speak until they get their television.

On the morning after their speech fast begins, the younger of the two boys on his way to school passes a neighbor lady, who greets him warmly – but, committed to his discipline, he ignores her and continues walking. Because she had recently had a minor conflict with their mother, she becomes convinced that the boy’s parents have said things about her that leads the children to shun her. Thus a trivial disagreement intensifies and spreads through the little neighborhood.

Two things about all this are worth noting. The first is that the movie is set in a suburb of Tokyo in which people live in very close proximity to one another, but with a domestic architecture that largely imitates that of traditional Japanese houses. Which is to say that people are going in and out of one another’s homes constantly, often sliding open doors without knocking, and in so doing opening the viewer’s world to people sitting in a house on the other side of the narrow walkway that separates one domicile from another. The fact that people live in such close proximity puts them in one another’s lives on a constant basis; but the fact that there are indeed doors separating one house from another means that they often do not know precisely what is going on in their neighbors’ houses and are led to make unwarranted assumptions. Maybe we could see this as a kind of anticipatory comment on social media: See Ian Bogost’s essay “People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much.”

The second point is this: there’s a lot of farting in this movie. All of the local boys play a game in which one presses another’s forehead, at which point the other is expected to generate a responding fart. “You’re no good,” says one boy to another who is unable to fart on command. (He tries so hard that he soils himself; his mother is frustrated at having to replace his underwear.) In another scene, a man dressing before work keeps farting, and in response to each fart his wife leans into the doorway to inquire what he needs.

The obvious implication of these two points – the boys’ perception of the chattering of adults and the persistence of farting – is that much human communication is actually non-substantive, non-informational – phatic is the term of art. Good Morning is a very funny but also a profound exposure of our need for communication, and the ways that communication can become miscommunication. The impulse to connect is, alas, a primary source of conflict — something Mark Zuckerberg will never really understand. Good Morning is a classic, one of Ozu’s few neglected masterpieces.

Really glad to get this fine book in the mail. Isaac has pulled off a very difficult task here: his book is straightforward and practical, charitable and wise. I hope many, many people read it. 

Let me just say a bit more about why I’m doing this Buy Me a Dragon thing. My thinking can be condensed into three simple points.

First: I’ve never been able to get published the things I am most interested in writing. I do not blame editors for this – they are professionally required to think of what won’t lose money, or what fits with their periodical’s mission and purpose, or what the people above them in the hierarchy will tolerate. And look, I’m a pro at this game – I have rarely even asked editors to publish my less marketable thoughts. I have trimmed my sails appropriately in advance. (Though I remember with great delight the rare exceptions – for instance, when John Wilson warmly agreed to let me write a 30th-anniversary essay on Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos. That was a red-letter day for me.) But…

Second: I have been thinking a lot about this from the English novelist M. John Harrison: “The idea you have when you’re young, to reach the edge of what can be done with your abilities and find out what might happen if you went past it? You promise yourself you’ll try but then wake up fifty years later to discover that you were in fact always too sensible to push things until they fell over, in case people thought less of you. In your seventies, though, it doesn’t seem to matter any more what other people think. That’s probably the first phase of your life in which you can actually do what you want. And certainly the last.” I’m still several years from my seventies … but I’m ready to be in that frame of mind now. And this blog may be the only venue where such exploration — as Eliot said, “Old men ought to be explorers” — is possible for me. 

Third: I have been genuinely moved by the messages I received from people when I suspended this blog last month, and by what they have written on my Buy Me a Coffee page. I had no idea that this blog meant anything to more than a dozen people. This recent encouragement has given me heart to resume my writing here – after a period in which I felt it was a completely pointless activity.

So that, in sum, is why I’m here. Buy Me a Coffee allows me to continue this work that’s meaningful to me without feeling that I’m losing money. It allows me to get paid — some, anyway — for what I really really want (and on some level need) to write. And that’s a wonderful feeling. So massive thanks to all who have supported me in this endeavor. 

In a key passage of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor writes: 

Although we respond to it very differently, everyone understands the complaint that our disenchanted world lacks meaning, that in this world, particularly youth suffer from a lack of strong purposes in their lives, and so on. This is, after all a remarkable fact. You couldn’t even have explained this problem to people in Luther’s age. What worried them was, if anything, an excess of “meaning”, the sense of one over-bearing issue — am I saved or damned? — which wouldn’t leave them alone. One can hear all sorts of complaints about “the present age” throughout history: that it is fickle, full of vice and disorder, lacking in greatness or high deeds, full of blasphemy and viciousness. But what you won’t hear at other times and places is one of the commonplaces of our day (right or wrong, that is beside my point), that our age suffers from a threatened loss of meaning. This malaise is specific to a buffered identity, whose very invulnerability opens it to the danger that not just evil spirits, cosmic forces or gods won’t “get to” it, but that nothing significant will stand out for it.

There was indeed, a predecessor condition with some analogies to this one, and that was “melancholy” or “acedia”. But this was, of course, enframed very differently. It was a specific condition, one might say, a spiritual pathology of the agent himself; it said nothing at all about the nature of things. It cast no doubt on the ontic grounding of meaning. But this ontic doubt about meaning itself is integral to the modern malaise….

Meanwhile, this malaise, and other similar ones, speak to the condition of the buffered identity. This condition is defined by a kind of cross-pressure: a deep embedding in this identity, and its relative invulnerability to anything beyond the human world, while at the same time a sense that something may be occluded in the very closure which guarantees this safety. This is one source … of the nova effect; it pushes us to explore and try out new solutions, new formulae. 

A very basic traditional Christian account of the cross-pressured self would probably look something like this: 

But of course a “very basic” account is not what we need. And this is where literature and the other arts come in. Great works of art offer non-schematic, finely-grained accounts of how people navigate these cross-pressures. (A phrase that Martha Nussbaum borrows from Henry James, “finely aware and richly responsible,” seems apropos here.) Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Auden, Pynchon, Percy, Bach, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and many others — these artists collectively shape my understanding of (a) the complexity of the cross-pressuring forces and (b) the multifarious ways we humans respond to those forces. 

Such complexity and multifariousness make me wonder whether we can ever come up with a valid general account of the Cross-Pressured Self. And yet we need one … I think.  

I’ve written before about the value of moderation in consistency, of the need when cross-pressured by countering winds to tack back and forth. Similarly, there’s the need, when trying to understand one’s world, to alternate between specificity and generality. I do a lot better with specificity, because I have seen the ways that the embrace of a Big Theory tends to shut down people’s minds. But lately I have been feeling the absence, in my thinking, of a more general account of who we are, how we got here, and how we might navigate the prevailing winds of the future. 

Or is that feeling merely a temptation? — Is the “general account” rather a snare and a delusion? Last month I had a stimulating conversation with Tal Brewer, a philosopher at UVA, in which Tal made the point that practical rationality is not a matter of calculating the means to a given end but rather acting in such a way as to instantiate that end right now, as best you can. (I think he explores the distinction, which is largely a distinction between a Kantian and an Aristotelian model, in this essay, but I haven’t yet acquired and read it.) I like that idea in part because it resonates with my understanding of Daoism. Daoism is big on doing the immediate right thing — and thus, in turn, rhymes with biblical ethics, focused as it is on obeying God (i.e., following Jesus) this day, and being held by God this day. Which is the special focus of Franciscan spirituality, and as I have said before, St. Francis is a kind of Jesus-loving Daoist sage. 

So maybe a “general account” is not what is needed so much as equipment for acting wisely and lovingly — in a Christlike way — this day. A Franciscan-Daoist ethic for a surveillance-capitalist hate-media world. What that might look like is something I plan to think about a lot in the coming year. Please stay tuned.  

There will be more soon on the specific notion of “equipment.” 

First newsletter of the new year!

David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters:

We tried this strategy [telling people about the incorrect interpretation before they catch it in the wild] back in June 2021 when Public Health England first published data showing that, among older people who had recently died with Covid-19, most had been vaccinated. We wrote an article pointing out that this did not mean the vaccine was ineffective – just that it was imperfect – and that the great majority of people had been vaccinated: in essence, a small proportion of a large number can be bigger than a larger proportion of a small number. Another useful analogy is with seatbelts: most people who die in car accidents are wearing seatbelts, but this does not mean that seatbelts are not effective – it’s just that nearly everyone wears one and they are not perfect.

The response to our “pre-bunking” was not encouraging. The Twitter link to our article included only its title, Why most people who now die with Covid in England have had a vaccination, and not the subhead, Don’t think of this as a bad sign, it’s exactly what’s expected from an effective but imperfect jab. As such, it was mistakenly interpreted as an anti-vaccination article (or worse) and circulated online. This, in turn, led to critical comments suggesting that we had encouraged vaccine scepticism and even an extraordinary tweet saying we (and the paper’s editors) were “genocidal” and should be “hunted down and destroyed”. We made light of this, saying this seemed a bit harsh, but we had had worse referees’ reports.

Morals of this story: People only read the headlines — at most — and no matter what opinion a public person has, someone on Twitter will demand his or her death. 

Also — and I think this is largely a matter of scale, with which I have been so concerned for a while now — it is virtually impossible to get people to understand that “a small proportion of a large number can be bigger than a larger proportion of a small number.” Long numbers rocket the mind. 

First 🔥 in many months