Conservative Disposition and Politics

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Clarissa

January 22, 2026

Michael Oakeshott says that people who are not of a conservative disposition are “disposed to recognize government as an instrument of passion.” For them, “the art of politics is to inflame and direct desire.”

I want to add that, writing 70 years after Oakeshott penned these words, this is all true but the object of desire changed because we changed. The greatest erotic attachment of a neoliberal subject is to the self. Consequently, his or her inflamed desire is directed towards the self, and the role of politics is to provide one with access to a climactic enjoyment of the self. I’m sure you can find examples of this everywhere. It’s not about any actual political measures any more. It’s about how being for or against the measures makes one feel. Of course, the feeling is internally manufactured. The measures are but an excuse.

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5 responses to “Conservative Disposition and Politics”

Anonymous

January 22, 2026

This is fizzing and bubbling in my head, in reaction with Orthodox teachings on the passions, and Ellul’s take on total propaganda, the destruction of self, and post-propaganda, the need for constant reinforcement to uphold the amputated psyche: trapped in the present and unable to form durable psychological scaffolding on its own.

I don’t know what salts will be left at the bottom of the beaker, but I want to watch and find out!

It feels as though Oakeshott, Ellul, maybe even Evagrius of Pontus, are all chipping away at the same mineral vein, but from different tunnels in the earth. Different vocabulary: same subject.

-ethyl

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 22, 2026
  
  The amputated psyche is exactly what it is. One of the things that are amputated is the capacity to attach securely to other human beings instead of fantasies of imaginary others in one’s head. Like this woman in MN who abandoned her children to emote about imaginary migrants.
  
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Anonymous

January 22, 2026

Ellul passages that burbled up:

“The reaction just described corresponds well to the alienation effected by propaganda. man is diminished; he can no longer live alone, decide for himself, or alone assume the burden of his life; he needs a guardian, a director of conscience, and feels ill when he does not have them. Thus a need for propaganda arises, which education can no longer change. From the moment the individual is caught, he needs his ration of pseudo-intellectual nourishment, of nervous and emotional stimulation, of catchwords, and of social integration. Propaganda must therefore be unceasing.

“Propaganda is concerned with the most pressing and at the same time the most elementary actuality. It proposes immediate action of the most ordinary kind. It thus plunges the individual into the immediate present, taking from him all mastery of his life and all sense of the duration or continuity of any action or thought. Thus the propagandee becomes a man without a past and without a future, a man who receives from propaganda his portion of thought and action for the day; his discontinuous personality must be given continuity from the outside, and this makes the need for propaganda very strong.”

One wonders if… this generation must produce a new batch of desert fathers: people who forsake their phones and internet access, go out into the desert, wrestle with demons, and try to rebuild their damaged souls.

It’s striking how much Ellul’s description of the propagandee after the propaganda ceases, resembles Evagrius’ description of Acedia.

I wonder how much overlap there is between Oakeshotte’s usage of the words “passion” and “desire” and the way we use those in Orthodoxy.

-ethyl

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1. Anonymous
  
  January 22, 2026
  
  …and dang, Ellul never even imagined the internet.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    January 22, 2026
    
    And the AI. People who sit there for hours, “talking” to it, massaging their already inflamed egos. I hate ChatGPT’s saccharine, subservient tone. But imagine people with a weak sense of self and a deep narcissistic wound. It’s catnip for them. No human relationship will ever measure up.
    
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