October 31, 2023
Is Corporate Woke Entering Its Death Throes?
No thanks to those who still patronize Disney and the other leftist corporate elites out there, but hats off to those who used to patronize but stopped. Me? I never purposefully patronized Disney, except for one trip to Disneyland in 2019, so I never had the opportunity to boycott the Satanists.
Tyler Durden
The Scariest Thing I Could Find for the Holiday
October 30, 2023
Podcast
A new feature, of sorts. It's a laid-back podcast. It's for "Members Only" because I need a lot of indulgence. Everything here, from the approach to the humor to the technology, is experimental. I'll need patience. I don't want a "stranger" to stumble across it, start to listen, and quickly conclude "This guy is a moron," and move on. I'm assuming (hoping, praying) TDE members will be more understanding as I stumble forward with this.
Monday Column
Well, more like a "feature." I worked on this off and on for three months. I hope everyone enjoys it.
October 29, 2023
The Return Eudemon
I just returned from Spartanburg, South Carolina. My son, Michael, got married there on Friday. Regular blogging, including a fun weekly feature, resumes tomorrow.
October 26, 2023
Martin Amis
Another bio of the great writer. I was disappointed to read that Amis was just another boring and conventional leftist, but this blurb about his smoking cracked me up:
His smoking was mythic. The biography of his father by Zachary Leader notes that Martin was given cigarettes for Christmas when he was nine. In The Information, whose title refers to the certainty of dying, he wrote,
Richard had imagined giving up smoking; and he naturally assumed that man knew no hotter hell. Nowadays he had long quit thinking about quitting . . . he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette.
October 24, 2023
Lou Reed
There's a massive new biography about Lou Reed, which brings in a lot of New York during the last third of the 20th century.
New York pre-Guiliani fascinates me, and Reed interests me. I started listening more to Reed lately after stumbling across "Dirty Blvd." and its ridiculous lyrics (I think Reed was trying to make a meaningful social justice statement, which is probably why the lyrics cracked me up):
Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor I'll p*** on 'em
That's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses
Let's club 'em to death
I also got a heavy dose of Velvet Underground in one of the most enjoyable "splurge/spontaneous" purchases/reads of my adult life, John Leyland, Hip, the History.
Added enticement: The publisher is Farrar, Staus and Giroux, which has been publishing great stuff since it took on Merton and O'Connor.
For one Audible credit, I get 20 hours of listening. Unfortunately, the author narrates the book. That's sometimes alright, and (somehow) the author's voice and pen tend to make such narrations enjoyable, but it's not better than a really good Audible narrator.
We'll see.
Note: Slow blogging winds blowing. Posting will be sporadic for the next few days.
October 23, 2023
Monday Column
This week's column flushes out an insight that has slowly been getting clearer in my head over the past year. It's one of those insights that seems obvious now, so much so that I half expect more erudite folks to read it and say, "Of course. Everyone knows that."
Maybe we'll see. The Medium link further below is a free link that I'm providing, in hopes of getting the essay "out there." Among all my essays this year, I believe this one might be the most significant (low bar, that).
Eric Scheske
October 21, 2023
One Professor's Massive Essay on TDE's Main Themes
There's even an Eric Voegelin sighting.
October 20, 2023
Brews You Can Use
October 19, 2023
Reclaiming St. Louis
I visited St. Louis a few years ago. It's a decent tourist destination and, I'm assured by people who live there, a good place to live.
But man, all the evidence you read says otherwise. I read on a blog this morning that its population is now under 290,000, as the urban center continues to implode.
So I don't know what to believe, but this woman seems to think St. Louis is both imploding and can be saved.
[T]he state destroyed decades of social capital, devastating communities in every major city in America. It’s not so much that the market solves everything as that the state causes lots of problems that it then cannot solve. So in the end, it’s civil society for the win. And since I’ve shared several of Lucas’ rebukes from his neighbors, I’ll share his rebuke of me. When I announced excitedly to him that I was getting a chance to speak about the neighborhood stabilization model all over the country, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Remember, Rachel—this is Jesus work.” Neighborhood stabilization isn’t a “microwave” solution, fast and easy. That’s why we so often choose toxic charity instead. Those who enter in must not only have a radical love for their neighbors but also a deep store of grace upon which to draw. I know a few of these wonderful Jesus people. But we need many, many more to answer the call.
October 18, 2023
Jon Fosse
Mr. Fosse received the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 5th. This development is relevant to TDE for three reasons: (1) It's literature, which is a form of counter-conduct and a means of flourishing; (2) He converted to Catholicism in 2012; and (3) In the words of the New York Times, he writes about characters who struggle with the reality of existing in the metaxy.
Okay, that's now exactly how the NYT phrased it. It said:
The Nobel Prize winner writes about characters trying to transcend their worldly lives.
In the modern world, most of us are mired in the worldly (the "immanent," to use Voegelin's preferred term). Any artist who portrays people striving for more is worth reading. Fosse is now on my list.
October 17, 2023
New Epstein Essay
I continue to marvel at the big names that The Lamp keeps publishing. The newest issue includes this nice piece by Joseph Epstein and an extended essay by Stanley Fish (who, I thought, was a fiercely amoral deconstructionist, but (i) I'm reaching way back in my memory banks so I might be wrong, and (ii) people change and I certainly haven't kept abreast of Stanley Fish developments over the past few decades).
Epstein's piece explores the importance of "intuitive knowledge" (something valued by the right hemisphere), as opposed to "explicit knowledge" (the only knowledge valued by the left hemisphere). It's a very important concept and I'm slightly embarrassed that I haven't developed a "Knowledge" area at TDE (a desideratum I have started to address).
October 16, 2023
Monday Column
Long-time TDE readers will recognize it. I'm incorporating it into a larger piece about reading, which will hopefully run next week, but I needed to get this back "out there" in the meantime.
October 15, 2023
Sunday Satire
October 14, 2023
Unintended Irony
I pass this church on my way to Mass on Fridays. I know many of the members. They're good people. They've just lost the thread of civilization.
We don't have hundreds of thousands of military-age single men crossing into our country right now?
— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) October 13, 2023
October 13, 2023
Brews You Can Use
October 11, 2023
Members Only
I rolled out a new tag this morning: Members Only. The tag will normally feature short essays from the "Outside the Modern Limits" newsletter archives (subscribe here). I'll gradually move more stuff behind the tag, but for now, it'll be a limited element at TDE.
Note: It costs nothing to subscribe. You just have to provide your email. You can even opt out of the (oh so fun) "Outside the Modern Limits" newsletter.
Reading
Interesting piece at The Nation about the rise and fall of "literary fiction," which I found interesting merely for the pithy definition of literary fiction:
d. fiction that privileges art over entertainment
October 10, 2023
The Southern Accent
The South is important because it's the most distinctive region of the United States. The "region" is the conceptual buffer between the "central" and the "local." We don't want to lose the region any more than a nation would want to lose a friendly country that sits between it and an enemy. Unfortunately, the regions are collapsing under the weight of our left-hemispheric need for relocation.
October 9, 2023
Monday Essay
October 8, 2023
Whew. It has been a ride this past week. Grandchild Number Six was born: Thomas Eric Scheske. Great name, that. Until he gets discharged, we have his older sister, featured here in my ramshackle miniature microgreen farm.
October 5, 2023
St. Bruno's Feast Day is Tomorrow
In preparation, here's a piece I published many years ago, back when the "Existence Strikes Back" project was still very young and The Hemisphere Hypothesis didn't exist. I'm stunned at the parallels to both, but I'll let you read it to figure them out for yourselves . . . or you can just read it for enjoyment.
October 4, 2023
Reading about Reading
I've long sneered at young people who watch people watch video gaming, but for an even longer time, I've enjoyed reading about other people reading. They're not the same thing, but there's enough overlap to give me discomfort.
October 3, 2023
Today's Featured Essay
My brief commentary on it
October 2, 2023
Monday Column
October 1, 2023
I started to write a commentary on this good essay, but it blossomed into a full essay that needs a bit more work, so I'm going to run it as the Monday Column tomorrow. Check back then.
Welcome to . . .
. . . the Month of the Saints: Lisieux, Francis, Avila, Bruno, Ignatius of Antioch, Luke, Anthony Claret, Simon and Jude. And now JPII and J23. Reminder: Don't neglect your best friend tomorrow.
