Alan Jacobs

A few notes about current and future plans:

• I won't be blogging much, if at all, over at The American Conservative, largely because I’ve come to think that the kinds of topics I write about there don't really fit into the blog format. I am a long-time believer in the beauty and usefulness of the moral essay, but the moral blog post? I don't think that works as well. The temptation to post quickly and get immediate feedback is strong, but to write in that way is to work against the natural grain of the essay form, to neglect what it does best: extended meditations that complicate one’s immediate responses. The essay is best when it embodies second and third thoughts; and, as a writer and a person, I am too. I hope that I will be able to write some longer essays for The American Conservative magazine: Dan McCarthy, the editor, and I are talking about that possibility.
• I am hoping by the end of this year to finish my current project; that will get the lion’s share of my time. But eventually I will want to work on what I’ve been calling the “technological history of modernity” (THM for short), and I will be reporting on my reading and trying out some ideas for that project over at Text Patterns, which I have re-animated.
• It’s possible that between completing the current book and starting THM I’ll write another short book, but that remains to be settled. Watch this space for news.
• I will have three long essays coming out this summer: one, on recent protests in American universities, will be in National Affairs; a second, on self-examination and other contemplative practices in a smartphone-controlled environment, in Comment; a third, on the decline of the Christian intellectual, in Harper’s. Again, stay tuned for links — though Harper’s paywalls their magazine.
• At one point I thought I would turn my 79 Theses on Technology into a short book, but I couldn't make that work. So instead, I reduced the number of theses, connected them more tightly to one another, and added commentary. If you’re a subscriber to The New Atlantis — which you should be, you know —, you can read the new and improved version now. But eventually you’ll be able to see it online here.
• In the meantime, you can read my thoughts on “Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity.”

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People that now panic about incipient caudillismo and the dangers of a nationalist demagogue didn’t care when Bush expanded the security state, trampled on the Constitution, or launched an unnecessary war of aggression, and people that yawned at the steady expansion of government and creation of new unfunded liabilities under Bush are now supposedly alarmed by Trump’s lack of fidelity to the cause of limited government. They correctly identify many of Trump’s flaws, but refuse to acknowledge the fact that the party was already killed (or at least severely wounded) years ago during the disastrous Bush era. It was that period of incompetence and ideologically-driven debacles that shattered the GOP, and for the last seven years the vast majority of die-hard Trump foes have refused to recognize that and have chosen to learn nothing from it. They lost to Trump, but the part they can’t accept is that they deserved to lose because of their role in enabling the GOP’s past failures. Now they’re touting their abandonment of the wreckage they helped to create as if they deserve applause for running away from their own handiwork. If it weren’t so serious, it would be quite comical.

Texas, of course, comes by its sense of being a place apart honestly: From 1836-1845, it was its own country, the Republic of Texas, and it has long feasted on hyperbole. But these days Texas does feel increasingly like a caricature of a caricature.

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I’ve been thinking lately, I’m not sure why, about my earlier novels, and I’m quite surprised how little I recall of them. I don’t know whether it’s liberating or worrying. Even The Names, which was set in Greece. Much of it, at least in terms of the travel in the novel, came out of personal experience. And even that seems very distant to me now. And Point Omega, my last novel — of course I know, essentially, what was going on there. But I could not have a serious discussion about it, I don’t think. Not at this point.

— Don DeLillo

I heard as good a story as I know this week about old Phelps the Provost of Oriel — you probably remember him, with the beard and the black straw hat. Jenner was a fellow of Jesus, a high-minded dissenter and fanatical tee-totaller. He was dining at Oriel and the Provost asked him to take wine with him:

Jenner: Sir, I would rather commit adultery than drink a glass of that.

Provost: (in a low, stern voice) So would we all, Jenner; but not at the table, if you please.

— C. S. Lewis, letter to his brother Warnie, 5 November 1939

Ever since I started work on the Dialogue on Democracy that I wrote for a while, and may pursue again, someday, I’ve been reading stuff by and about neoreactionaries, which has led me more than once to Scott Alexander’s Anti-Reactionary FAQ. I was looking at it again today, and had, quite strongly, a thought I have had before: Alexander is a first-rate mind and a consistently interesting writer, but his understanding of history is shockingly weak. But then, the same is true of every single prominent neoreactionary, though none of them, as far as I know, has cited The Oatmeal as a source for historical analysis. So we have this extended argument that has been going on for years now, much of which is based on the interpretation of historical events, not one participant in which has engaged with serious professional historians.

And I think that’s because serious professional history simply doesn’t lend itself to support of particular contemporary political proposals. There are just too many variables. Ask whether crime rates have gone up or down in the past hundred years and you’re immediately landed in a morass of questions: How good is the data for any given place, any given time? Do we have a consistent definition of “crime”? (Hint: No.) How many different cultural environments, political systems, economic conditions are we comparing, and how much do those variables affect the comparisons?

A mess like this is enough to make a smart person quote The Oatmeal and be done with it.

What suffering do you plan to inflict today, Arsenal? Enough.

Other clubs are worse, but only you so deftly raise hopes, then crush them.

Wounded may return, but only to lose their way as Özil lost his.

Adrift in a fog of mind, you draw us also there. We too are lost.

Enough! Coffee and birdsong call me. Let morning be; no BFG.