43 Comments

I subscribe to the writing of about 50 Substack authors, most of them free, some paid. The paid subscriptions fall into two basic categories: authors whose writing I value so much that I am simply unwilling to miss anything they've produced - and those whose depth, integrity and wisdom in pursuit of what is true and real simply enjoin me to support the work they are doing.

Paying the first group is transactional and curiously personal: I get something valuable, I laugh, I cry, I'm uplifted, I'm informed. I'm provoked. I'm connected.

Paying the second group is expressive and purposeful and in a sense almost impersonal: in paying these authors I am able to press the world just a tiny bit in the direction of what is good and wise. I am fulfilling my own commitments. I am supporting the genuine struggle for truth where it has unexpectedly and serendipitously appeared.

"The Upheaval" belongs to both categories. It's a privilege to be a subscriber.

Expand full comment
Sep 7, 2023Liked by N.S. Lyons

Life is serendipitous. A week ago my wife and I were discussing the state of the world and she concluded that we were in a time where good and evil were coming into direct conflict and that C.S. Lewis addressed the notion of good and evil in the Witch, The Lion and the Wardrobe. Two days ago I read your analysis in the City Journal of The Fourth Turning which led me to your SubStack site and your piece on Lewis and Tolkien. Today I am a paid subscriber. At the heart of serendipity lies nature and truth. Trust it.

Expand full comment
founding
Sep 7, 2023Liked by N.S. Lyons

You write one of the best stacks out there. I think that all of us are craving solutions -- there is lots of problem recitation and some days it just gets depressing. I look forward to this next phase with Great Expectations. (Hey, worked for Dickens...)

In an effort to be helpful, and as a concrete indicator of how important a step your readers think this is, I have upgraded from paid subscriber to Founding Patron. I fully expect to have bought a bargain when all is said and done.

Thanks for what you do.

Expand full comment
author

Wow, many thanks Dr. K! 🙏

Expand full comment
founding

Go for it. I concluded a couple of years ago that if this is to be stopped, it will have to be a collectively, individual effort. Each person will have to resist, refuse and undermine every little piece of this plan in every way and every minute, we can. It's really hard to catch scattered and constantly moving quarry.

Expand full comment

Worth every penny. I’m interested to see what solutions you envision. I’m afraid some may be coming back on their shields before it is all over.

Expand full comment
Sep 7, 2023·edited Sep 7, 2023Liked by N.S. Lyons

I told myself I was done with new paid subscriptions for the rest of the year, but then I read some of your longer pieces, and now there's this news...so I made an exception just this once. Just noting this here to keep myself accountable.

Best of luck and looking forward to reading more!

Expand full comment

I consider, A Prophecy of Evil: Tolkien, Lewis, and Technocratic Nihilism, the single most informative and revelatory substack article I have read in relation to the nature and essence of this "unwelcome imposition from above of a solidifying order of control, cold as iron and heartless as ice." Thank You, and I will continue to subscribe to and recommend your substack.

Expand full comment

Same. NICE

Expand full comment
Sep 7, 2023Liked by N.S. Lyons

OK, I subscribed. And just FYI, FWIW, the reason is the essay The Temptations of Carl Schmitt, one of the best things I've read on any Substack.

Expand full comment

One of the very best blogs ever. (I call Substacks blogs.) I look forward to every essay.

Expand full comment
Sep 7, 2023Liked by N.S. Lyons

I hope this means that your writing is offering you the opportunity to do this. Looking forward to more of your work.

P.S. If you need an assistant, I'm available.

Expand full comment

Congratulations to making this courageous leap. Your essays have conjured to effect the arrival of illumination in my mind to comprehend what, exactly, the heck is going on in our twisted, absurd and utterly strange society. I look forward to continuing to be a loyal subscriber, and I can only hope there are a sufficient amount of other people who share my sentiment to enable the possibility of nothing by an outright success of your new and existing enterprises.

Expand full comment

So I also subscribe. thats very few for me, coz I'm frugal and also i believe that theres lots of ways to be reciprocation. But you need to keep writing your most comprehensive thoughts which have continuously blown me away. As someone who has expressed very similar concerns from an animistic lens, to find a mainstream voice feels like such a gift.

Expand full comment

Hello!

Thrilled to see you take this step. In support, I've signed up for a year.

Good luck! Can't wait to see what you do with it.

Expand full comment

Defund Toxic Femininity.

Defund. It’s all about the money. Oppressive government is extremely expensive; money is it’s lifeblood. Remember the Tea Party? They had it right. The foundation stone of limited government is fiscal conservatism. Remember the Boston Tea Party way back when? This is precisely how and why our nation was founded.

Toxic Femininity. The devouring mother. Caring and nurturing and supervising and dictating and finally ruling with an ironclad fist. This archetype is described by Carl Jung and throughout mythology and legend. Nurturing hormones run amok. When this instinct infects government it cannot be addressed directly any more than one can confront a mother grizzly bear. But with patience and determination it can be defunded. People don’t really vote for policies or principles because they’re not interested. But they will vote their pocketbooks!

Socialism is the opiate of the masses. A toxically feminine government wants infantile people who will repine on mother’s teats, slumbering and sucking.

Expand full comment

Toxic femininity/devouring mothers (ironically, most of them childless)...legions of neurotic women programmed by malicious elements in academia and government to destroy all beauty and worth including their own...must be addressed if we have a chance to save western civilization.

Expand full comment

Right. As you say, most of them childless. That’s the problem! Their nurturing hormones have not been properly utilized. It’s a case of unused hormones run amok.

Expand full comment

"...I've concluded the upheaval we face around the world today is essentially the consequence of the (re) arrival of totalitarianism."

I completely agree with this conclusion (and it is frightening, indeed).

"It is time to move past the diagnostic phase of this Substack. Already the hour feels late... l intend the thrust of my work here to shift more towards the question of what is to be done..."

I would simply add to that sentiment--also what is not to be done.

I again stand in complete solidarity with your shift. Our antagonists have already gone all in and now we must create and discuss our own all-in counter moves because the stakes, in my opinion, are as high as they can be.

Expand full comment

I'm just gonna echo what is said here in so many comments, "I am the privileged one to pay and get NS Lyons' Upheaval." And I am getting my money's worth! And now you are cutting the cord and going solo. Fantastic. Bien viaje! I actually print out many of your pieces - that's how indispensable I find them. I always ruminate on them. Cogitate. Your piece on the virtuals and physicals and the trucker convoy is when it all struck me how special your perspective is. Thanks.

And now you did it! It's totalitarianism. All those old monikers that we have lived with for a century or more are back with a vengence and a new reality. Fascism is what the coastal liberal democrats call the deplorables. How confused these elite wannabes are. What they can't seem to understand is, even though all we do is progress forward in their worldview, we seem to be revisiting social constraints and having similar reactions. Fascism, totalitarianism, populism, progressivism. It's still communism versus capitalism versus socialism versus technocratic and administrative state versus laissez faire versus a planned economy.

We have wealth and income inequality at levels only seen in 1910. The stresses are enormous globally. Everywhere all the time. In your face. The concentration of wealth in elite circles and the over educated professional classes circling for chum (this includes most gov't workers) has to manifest itself in mischief and malfeasance.

We are going crazy if we don't wake up. Yes, it's time for action. Protest. Articulation of values and beliefs and principles.

I printed the Bill of Rights and put it on my office wall. I read it daily.

Do something!

We can handle this if we put our shoulders into it!

Expand full comment