I’m back stateside. Saw diesel prices on the way home. Couldn’t figure out what those numbers were at first. I was only away for a week, so the change didn’t track.
I guess that’s it for the midterms then. It was good while it lasted.
Let’s hope that one day we’ll see a Republican president who will choose to forget the words “Middle East.” In the meantime, let’s buckle up for Woke 2.0.
Speaking about Westerners, when a plane lands and everybody waits to disembark, the bastards who turn on their speakerphone for extremely loud relatives never speak English.
To illustrate my preceding post, here are some Bible verses chosen pretty much at random. They are from daily Bible readings for yesterday for the Orthodox Church in America:
When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear Me, everyone, and understand:
15
There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.
So much in our lives is defined by the idea laid out by Jesus here that it’s kind of insane. We don’t notice it anymore because this kind of thinking has been so normalized to us but consider for a moment hearing this 2,000 years ago. Consider hearing this before the world this idea created came into existence.
Today, we see it as completely normal that we are the source of the shitty things in our lives. And the source of the good things. If I have psychological problems, I seek therapy for myself. I want to be a better parent, I work on myself. I’m doing my productivity practices because my hate work comes from the inside.
The greatness of this idea is almost scary. If I’m being a shit, it’s not because of anything others did to me. Not being a shit is within my area of responsibility. Nobody has the power to soil me. Yes, people can do terrible things to other people. But the beauty and the strength of human beings is that we are always more than that. Our inner world is always bigger than the externality. The answer lies within. I’ve witnessed what happens when non-Western people hear this for the first time. It’s intense.
The layered, complicated inner architecture of Westerners is the result of these words spoken 2,000 years ago.
That’s a lovely question. The Western Civilization is the world made by Christianity. When Christianity seeps into every manifestation of life at every level, that’s Western Civilization.
You know that you’ve become Western when somebody pushes you accidentally in a public place and you automatically say, “Sorry.” Or when you walk for 30 minutes holding a receipt or an empty can because you can’t throw it anywhere except in a trash can.
To help students understand the connection between the things I described in the preceding two paragraphs, I’d introduce them to the following two texts:
You can introduce pretty much any major Western thinker and artist through these two books. They constitute two necessary poles for discussing the Western Civilization. The first describes the source of its glory and the second explains its biggest wound. They are also beautifully written.
No, absolutely not. And I don’t believe that a reputable specialist would offer this form of counseling. You can’t have therapy in such a deeply unequal relationship. Your mother played an enormous role in forming your psyche. You played zero role in forming hers. What she needs to discuss in therapy has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with you. What you need to discuss in therapy has a lot to do with her.
If a mother is offering to go to therapy with her child, I’m sorry to say, but that’s not a great sign. If the child is considering it, that’s an even worse sign. On the positive side, if such an adult child wants to start solving her psychological problems, she should know exactly where to start. The entry into the process is in considering the fact of her mother’s refusal to play the motherly role.
I suggest spending some time pondering what I said earlier. You did not raise your mother. You were not there for her formative years. She got completely formed long before you showed up. Zero, and I repeat, zero of her psychological problems have had any input from you. You cannot fix the relationship between the two of you because you did not set any of its terms.
After a short interlude of being able to go outside, walk, wear normal clothes, and enjoy outdoors activities, we are returning to extreme heat warnings, sweat-drenched outfits, second-degree burns from accidentally touching a car seat belt buckle, and the realization that we probably won’t be able to crack a window open until November.
It’s from a real book titled “My Life with Anxiety.”
Leaving aside the absolute insanity of CBD gummies and self-imposed lockdowns, it’s interesting that anxiety is presented as something that just is, like an amputated leg. No exploration of its causes is suggested. No hope of a cure is offered.
In Putin’s defense—I know, right?—there was no hope for Russia getting better, even if Putin never existed and Russia stayed within its borders. It’s not that Russia has no future because it invaded Ukraine. It invaded Ukraine because it has no future. The war isn’t the cause of its decline; it’s a symptom.
I have the best memories of McGill University because, as students, we were really challenged, assigned mountains of readings. A professor would approach me randomly, give me a page-long, single-spaced list of readings, and tell me that he expected me to have them completed and have an article ready for publication on one of the texts by the end of the semester. This was not for any specific course. It was on top of the course load. Since then, the concept of having to read or to write “too much” does not exist for me.
I remember once during my master’s program, a professor came up to me and asked, with a very annoyed look, “So you aren’t doing anything? You’re not occupied with anything useful?”
I said, “Professor, I’m taking courses, teaching courses, writing my dissertation, and preparing an article and a conference talk.”
He said, “Exactly as I’m saying, you aren’t doing much. Here is a project you will start working on today.” The project turned out to be on the nation-state.
I will be eternally grateful.
“You get at most one cliché per book.”
Jonathan Franzen doesn’t finish most books people send him. He reads until the second cliché, then stops.
“People send me a galley of a book that’s coming out. I read along until I get to the second cliché, and I say, thank you.”
People are freaking out on social media over these statements by Jonathan Franzen. They probably have no idea what the word cliché means and are vaguely bothered as a result.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
“I guess that’s it for the midterms then” I wouldn’t be so sure… that $5000 if the republicans win both…
> “Saw diesel prices on the way home. Couldn’t figure out what those numbers were at first. ” Yeah, I remember the…
I always wanted to read it. Maybe this sabbatical is a good time.
The brave black dude is now a hero world over. This is from Argentina but I’ve also seen posts in…
You might enjoy Belloc’s Europe and the Faith. I’m reading it now, and it’s… surprisingly enjoyable. I always enjoy Belloc…
https://x.com/sfmcguire79/status/2100303907083731274
“The liberal oppression Olympics is hard to figure out because who knew that a rich white lady would suddenly come…
I would also mention the book “Saving Leonardo” by Nancy Pearcey. It’s been recommended to me recently and I haven’t…
Oh, absolutely. Without Christianity there is no West.
Yeah, race trumps everything else… right up until a minority disagrees with the progressive party line. Gotta keep em on…
I hope he sells the rights to his story at least to defeat some of the costs of all this.…
OT: the holdout juror, now doxxed, is taking defensive PR measures: https://x.com/SarahisCensored/status/2100022900396847407
Getting to know a writer is often deeply disappointing. There are exceptions. I once met a Spanish writer who was…
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You should move out west to Arizona. The desert humidity here is so low that you’ll never break out a…
Thank you so much! What a kind thing to say.
Just the one. 😉
Franzen is the epitome of an insufferable intellectual snob, the kind of whom we sooner or later learn that he’s…
That matches with my observations growing up around a lot of different Asian immigrants. I didn’t know a lot of…
Kid, how much of the actual history of Canadian immigration do you actually know? Human tribalism can be very ugly,…
We on your blog are all grateful for that professor, and for your great writings.
Yes. Unless you had 2 speakers who said the exact same thing.
I have a strong suspicion that this is a comment from the kick-ass speaker in question. 😉
Ha!
My husband and I once read a novel written completely out of clichés, but in all earnestness. We wept while…
She could at least thank God for her son before thanking the app 🤔
Guess he wouldn’t get past the 1st page in a Kristen Hanna book.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Assimilation goes against nature and requires specific effort. Dude, even I need to ask questions…
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RPMC boot camp, really ;-D
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This is why I like to say that the best thing my parents ever did was move to the New…
Actually assimilation is not complete until they intermarry, there was considerable resistance amongst many ethnic groups in western Canada until…
True. People who have assimilated will not prefer to hire from their immigrant group. At an office party, they will…
Arg. CCP=PRC
The Viet Kieu I have known all my life assimilated remarkably well. 1st gen are obviously not Americans, but tend…
There’s a common idea even on the more “racist” right that east Asian immigrants assimilate unusually well. They seem to…
Exactly. There’s some sort of weird parental anxiety involved. Like if the child steps out of the hustle for a…
Free, unstructured time when kids loiter around aimlessly is the most developmentally crucial and useful. People want to turn kids…
Bykov is extremely talented as a poet. But in what concerns his prose, he’s nowhere near Veller.
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