René Guénon believed that tradition had died in the West. He studied Vedanta, and eventually converted to Islam.
Sometimes I wonder if we are watching the death of manhood in the West. Where is your courage?
11 thoughts on “Remembering the toxic”
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Not directly relevant to your question, but I am pleased to see The Hu linked by such an illustrious blog. Thanks to the wonders of Google (probably something something Tensorflow), Youtube pointed me at them more than a year ago.
Not sure how to take your general question in context. Are you an admirer of the Traditionalist School tributary (Guenon, Burckhardt, Evola, etc.) of Perennialist philosophy? If so, I managed to miss that admiration until now (and I’ve been following you for more than decade). Does not seem to fit with what I have taken as an Hayekian anti-obscuranticism in you up to now (which anti-obscuranticism I share to the degree that you in fact have it).
i wouldn’t say i’m an admirer of perennialism in the guenon sense. i respect the sentiment that old cultures have truth more than i did ten years ago.
i was introduced to the hu in 2018 by someone from the reich lab 🙂
Is that a criticism of effeminate bourgeois conformists who go along with “woke” culture? I always find those posts which seem to refer to contemporary trends rather cryptic.
It’s the Cycle of the Steppe. Warriors settle down, become fat and lazy and are taken over by a group which is hungry and brave.
Very sad, but human nature…
Reich Lab eh? Sounds kind of like Alexander Kim’s kind of jam. (Given what he’s generally interested in). I expect neither confirmation nor denial 😉 .
Paglia claims that in late phases of societies, “maleness is always in retreat”. She also says that masculinity has been the “most fragile and problematic of psychic states.” Coming from her, this is not a pejorative, but rather a warning.
@German_reader
Unfortunately, most of the men nowadays who reject effeminate bourgeois conformity (which exists as much now as when it was embodied by early 20th Century bourgeois luminaries like Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Bloomsbury) end up either as reclusive, solitary eccentrics who exist mostly on the internet and may or may not be found to be somewhere on the autism spectrum, or as psychopaths who worship the Columbine shooters and might one day emulate them.
Traditional masculinity is in a tough spot, partly because these two types, the eccentrics and psychos, are used to demonize it.
Mekal:
“effeminate bourgeois conformity (which exists as much now as when it was embodied by early 20th Century bourgeois luminaries like Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Bloomsbury)”
Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Bloomsbury, “conformity”???? More, I imagine that, in their time, “effeminate (…) conformity” was a contradiction in terms
@Miguel
Compared to the working class, the bourgeoisie of the fin de siecle/Edwardian era were much more androgynous and open to alternative sexualities and, to borrow from Judith Butler, performances of gender than those of the lower orders, and much more civilized in their attitudes towards women; recall that the suffragette movement was thoroughly bourgeois, part of why Emma Goldman opposed women’s suffrage and why David Lloyd George held off female suffrage prior to passing his social welfare reforms. Amongst other things, this is bourgeois conception of the sexes is part of what the post-war far-right across the continent was rebelling against.
Razib may have had this study in mind when he posted the Hu:
“Women are more supportive of illegalizing insults of immigrants, homosexual individuals, transgender individuals, the police, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Jewish people, and Christians, and are more supportive of banning sexually explicit public statements and flag burning. In contrast, men evaluate free speech as more important than do women.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-antisocial-psychologist/202104/the-gender-gap-in-censorship-support
But of course, this has been going on for decades, and I called it way back when … Women always want the power that men dealing forthrightly with the world develop. But when women get that power, they risk destroying their own civilization.
In 2012:
“In general, the contemporary mode of emotionalism and herding is the human default. The great ages of intellectual progress via debate were rare social constructs, and it’s not surprising that they easily break down.” https://www.unz.com/isteve/intellectual-discourse-taking/
Paglia pointed out in the 80’s that androgyny comes before the fall. Perhaps ironically, the high points of Western culture have arisen during times when male homosexuality was relatively common. The evolutionary purpose of male homosexuality, IMO, is to level out violent male competition for mates, which allows for higher culture and civilization to flourish.
The simple fact is that men have been deprived of anything worth fighting for in our society. Every male oriented space has been forced to accept unwanted members, the family is precarious and easily dissolved, and men have been demonized for decades. If anything, men are being incentivised to burn the whole thing down.