There is increasing talk of a looming civil war in America. There has even been a website – anewcivilwar.com – established to track the increasing speculation on civil war by both left and right. Two years ago the academic military strategist, Michael Vlahos speculated on the form and likelihood of a Third Civil War. VlahosContinueContinue reading “America’s fate: civil war, fragmentation or collapse?”
Tag Archives: culture
The failure of institutions in the pandemic crisis
Yuval Levin argues that the institutions of contemporary society, primarily America in his account, have become degraded. There is a good discussion with Yuval Levin on this topic over at the Hoover Institution Youtube channel. We have lost trust in these institutions, he argues, because simply they have become less trustworthy. Their performance has beenContinueContinue reading “The failure of institutions in the pandemic crisis”
What on earth is going on? Reflections on the current unrest
In today’s world the falcon cannot hear the falconer. In the widening gyre of overlapping world crises, our minds have lost contact with our culture. We are hunters alone and adrift in terrain we have not mapped, and can not find our way back home. I will not repeat the well-repeated line, too often fenced,ContinueContinue reading “What on earth is going on? Reflections on the current unrest”
Plague Notes
The stay-at-home urging continues, and we are all doing the responsible thing. Some order appears to be returning to the supermarkets – yesterday I was able to buy nearly everything, except a whole chicken, that I wanted to. We are confined at home. Even young lovers are practising social distancing to protect their doctor parents:ContinueContinue reading “Plague Notes”
The great seclusion
Michel Foucault’s history of madness describes the decrees of 1656 that confined the insane, the unemployed, and the socially aberrant to the Hôpital général de Paris, the former home of the lepers and the plague-ridden. It was part of what he described as the Great Confinement. “It is common knowledge that the seventeenth century createdContinueContinue reading “The great seclusion”
The plague year
I have been following the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic since January, especially through the remarkable podcast Warroom: Pandemic hosted by Steven K. Bannon. The world is now living in its modern plague year, and the explosion of a crisis that cannot be managed. The great cities of the world – Wuhan, Beijing, Milan, Venice,ContinueContinue reading “The plague year”
Degeneration
“A generation after the commissars left the scene, positive freedom is more difficult to attain, and the West is populated by people who are less and less capable of an agency free from the banalities of the marketplace, the media, and mass opinion. It is not clear that our institutions can survive without a freeContinueContinue reading “Degeneration”
The persistence of the Mahabharata
My trip to Bali – now over, since I am returned from the tropical paradise to the dry urban refuge of my home in Melbourne – reminded me not only of Clifford Geertz, but also of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. As we drove through Denpasar, we saw massive modern statues depicting scenes fromContinueContinue reading “The persistence of the Mahabharata”
Notes on a Balinese cockfight
I am in Bali, staying for a short stay luxury escape at Padma Resort, Ubud, which is actually at a small village, Payangan, about 45 minutes drive north of Ubud. It is a marketing sleight of hand by the resort, but no matter. For the cost of minor distance from the well-known Ubud, connected byContinueContinue reading “Notes on a Balinese cockfight”
Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity
“Never have human groups of such a size been so rich, so old, so educated, so devoid of collective beliefs.”Emmanuel Todd, Lineages of Modernity, p 21 I picked up from the local library Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity: a history of humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus. It is a sweeping reconception ofContinueContinue reading “Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity”
Where is virtue in dark times?
“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are.ContinueContinue reading “Where is virtue in dark times?”
Bloom’s last lilac: the death of Harold Bloom (1930-2019)
The American literary critic, or rather lover of literature, is dead at 89. There are the usual range of bad obituaries, collected over at aldaily.com, prepared by scornful woke journalists (“staff writers”) on the make or embittered post-modern pedants envious of his gifts of memory, language and understanding. But these fashionable madmen cannot mar theContinueContinue reading “Bloom’s last lilac: the death of Harold Bloom (1930-2019)”
Game of Thrones and the reenchantment of the world
“There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three – storyteller, teacher, enchanter – but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.” Vladimir Nabokov,ContinueContinue reading “Game of Thrones and the reenchantment of the world”
Reflections on 2018… fragments
This year has had no coherent themes for me, and perhaps that is why I have struggled to write posts with a clearly signposted judgment on 2018. Only now it occurred to me that it has been a year of fragments and broken off story lines. So, the form of the fragment may be myContinueContinue reading “Reflections on 2018… fragments”
Reflections on 2018… ambiguous loss
I am listening to the On Being podcast that features this week a conversation with Pauline Boss on the meaning of ambiguous loss and how there is a myth of closure in our cultures of impatient striving and ceaseless ambition. There does not need to be an end to grief or to loss. We haveContinueContinue reading “Reflections on 2018… ambiguous loss”
What I am reading… Solzhenitsyn on his limited experience
From a review of recent books on Solzhenitsyn come this brief account of the conservative Russian author’s encounter with condescending and blinkered American liberalism: “leading television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my own limitedSoviet and prison-camp experience. Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonmentContinueContinue reading “What I am reading… Solzhenitsyn on his limited experience”
Could the culture wars descend into civil wars?
Over at the online magazine Quilette, a Shakespeare scholar at a minor English university, Neerna Parvini, commenting on the Brett Kavanaugh appointment hearing, that turmoil of identity politics fuelled by partisan cynicism, raised a very dire prospect. “If I was being pessimistic, I’d say it was a moment in which the left chose a nuclearContinueContinue reading “Could the culture wars descend into civil wars?”
The slow death of my history
Over the last couple of months I have been reading history. Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs: 1613-1918, Orlando Figes A People’s Tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891-1924, and Ian Kershaw’s Rollercoaster: Europe 1950-2017. All of this reading has been valuable and fascinating to me. The intricate catastrophes of the Romanov dynasty, the myriad tragedies of theContinueContinue reading “The slow death of my history”
The meaning of a coup
Barely a week ago Australia was gripped in political drama – a clumsily organised coup was unseating a Prime Minister. News stations had rolling 24/7 coverage of panels of journalists talking to unfolding events. Breathlessly they read out texts from conspirators on-air, while claiming no part in the fiasco that has become Australian politics. ThereContinueContinue reading “The meaning of a coup”
The Abyss and cultural rebirth
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Joseph Campbell “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”ContinueContinue reading “The Abyss and cultural rebirth”