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Truthbird's avatar

Thank you for bringing Don Baton's Substack to our attention. I just subscribed to it.

I'm a classically-trained musician who shares the same rigorous approach to the western classical music canon as he does, and I appreciate his writing tremendously. I wouldn't have known about it had you not highlighted it here.

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A. N. Owen's avatar

For a good take on Macron versus Le Pen, Ed West (Wrong Side of history substack) has a decent read: https://edwest.substack.com/p/marine-le-pen-and-the-thatcher-paradox?s=r He compares France to Britain and notes that the French younger generations are increasingly more conservative than their elders, which is the reverse of Britain's voting habits.

West is also worth subscribing to for his blend of current events and history. I'd think you'd enjoy his essays.

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Emmanuel Oswald's avatar

Hello N.S ! Regarding Musk and Twitter - I would recommend Mary Harrington's piece for UnHerd : https://unherd.com/2022/04/do-we-need-king-elon-musk/

You probably saw it... I actually wrote a commented summary for our French speaking audience

https://www.laselectiondujour.com/elon-musk-chevalier-blanc-de-la-liberte-dexpression-n1576/

Completely different topic we are following here : the major shift in Sweden now going thru serious riot problems after their pro immigration policies. A case study...

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

In re the Florence Price article, it really does remind me of Havel's Greengrocer, not because I think we live in a Communist dictatorship, but because of the ways people are forced to navigate a dogmatic and vindictive monoculture, where one wrong statement (even one misinterpreted word or phrase overheard by a stranger) can result in social, career and even financial death.

We all know why Florence Price has suddenly been thrust into the classical pantheon, everyone doing it knows what they're doing and why, and I assume everyone attending one of these performances also knows what's happening and why--but no one is allowed to say so and speak the simple truth that this is some form of cultural reparations, that for various reasons our cultural leaders have all unanimously decided the current paramount value in all fields is antiracism, that the first purpose of culture now is "rectifying historical wrongs" or "centering marginalized voices" or whatever the current jargon is. Or, more to the point (as the article states), we are not celebrating Price for her work, but for her race and gender.

So if I know it and they know it, you have to assume any black people in the vicinity know it too, and it becomes obvious to everyone that what we're watching is a dishonest performance of guilty white liberals desperately trying to save their hides by mouthing current platitudes about 'white supremacy' and bowing and atoning to any black person they can find--not because they've thought any of it through, or because they think Florence Price is better than Brahms, but because this is what the "movement" and its dogma demand.

Now that the New Left has successfully seized the means of cultural production, if you're to have any career in culture you must bow to their demands and parrot their dogma. And much like all their Left predecessors, this has created a culture and society where public fealty and being a good soldier for the cause matter first and foremost, while every statement and action quickly begin to reek of fear, paranoia and dishonesty.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Yeah, pretty amazing how often that Greengrocer is relevant these days.

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Frank Lee's avatar

Welcome back. Great stuff!

“Now, I like Haidt. He’s a really smart, affable guy who’s produced some really great work. I also happen to dislike life on social media generally. And I certainly agree that the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid. But I think this piece suffers from some serious tunnel vision.“

Yup. Agree 100%. I became a great big Haidt fan after reading Righteous Mind. But he blew past the prior years before big tech and social media evolved as censors of right-leaning opinions and content. Wikipedia used to be reliable. The left-drift of the mainstream print, video and film media was accelerating before Twitter got popular. The root of this sickness goes straight to the education system. The corruption of the media… including social media… is directly related to the number of graduates indoctrinated in the critical theory mind virus that have been launched into almost every industry and discipline. The classical music story is just another example. The fix requires a purge of the education curriculum and identification of those currently corrupted by it. They need therapy and should NOT be hired until they clear up that mind virus.

“But the Enlightenment began a long revolt against Plato, and soon:

Within a couple of centuries, Liberalism came to fear ideals. After all, their very existence evinces some standard that is superior to the human individual and his or her personal preferences, causing he or she — knowing of nothing but a world in which their own agency is taken as the prime source of meaning – to be offended by them. For the liberal, the very principle of the eternal appears totalitarian; that it should have any control over their life is practically fascistic.”

I think there is a bit of a miss here as the ideas solidify a foundation (the roots if you will) that provide the individual the security to pursue creative self interest. Look up libertarian patriarchy and read the book “Nudge”.

“ Physicals vs. Virtuals, as I’ve been telling you.”

Yes. Interesting that this is the Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged. Her problem is that she did not incorporate any idea of globalism into her vision. Let’s use Musk for example. He shrugs and it really does not benefit the physicals as other less capable people in the global economy just start peddling alternatives. It would take the food producers to shrug before getting the attention of the moochers. Interesting that the looters are sort of shooting themselves in the foot this way by causing inflation… thus preventing a need of the producers, like the Canadian truckers, to shrug.

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Diamond Boy's avatar

NS Lyons, (or anyone else) in your opinion is Curtis Yarvin reliable?

I’m really loving his stuff but he strikes me as a megalomaniac. Curtis is clearly brilliant, but he claims such a gigantic perspective that my instincts tell me to be careful.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

I am torn on, and often frustrated by, Curtis Yarvin. On the one hand, I find much of his analysis on how power works and how our system has become an oligarchic regime undeniably persuasive. He has a brilliant mind and his critique is very powerful.

On the other hand, I find his solution, such as it is, to be, uh, underwhelming. Because – and I can’t really believe I am writing this sentence – scrapping the constitutional democracy we have (to the extent that we have one) and replacing it with a monarchy (dictatorship) probably will not end well at all.

We know this because of course just about every modern dictatorship (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc.) turned out rather badly. And Yarvin has, to my knowledge, never been able to address why his monarchy would produce an enlightened Augustus instead of Stalin. He constantly reverts to talking about the past and the Carolingians and whatnot, when the power of kings was actually well-limited. Which is true. But he has never accounted for the growth of the modern centralized state and the fact this means it is now seemingly inevitable that, with the power of the total state at his fingertips, the 20th century king becomes Stalin.

Or, best case scenario, we get to be run by the average American CEO as absolute monarch. Who wants to be run by Disney’s Bob Iger? Because that’s approximately who you’re probably gonna get, not freaking Aragorn.

I think I’d rather take my chances with reviving the Republic.

But then sometimes Yarvin seems to suggest that all he means is that we elect another super-powerful president like FDR, who will clean out the unaccountable bureaucracy but keep the constitutional system. He is never very clear about this, because all of his writing is exceptionally playful and ironic. And so it’s not entirely clear he doesn’t just mainly enjoy playing with ideas and generally being a bit of a troll.

Ultimately I think of Yarvin as a bit of a utopian: he has good reasons not to like what we have now, but his imagined plans for a rosy future would almost certainly end in a shitshow. So I’d say he’s a bit like Marx: read him for some often very strong critical analysis of the system as it is, but beware his prescriptive solutions.

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jt's avatar

I finally got to The World Order Reset which Sir RJF recommended. Thank You SIR! I just posted over there:

Phew! Words fail me, and that doesn't happen. Just can say thank You. Much to chew on from Your enlightening discussion. TYTY again.

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Diamond Boy's avatar

N.S. Lyons is the best, eh!

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jt's avatar

You've got the right of it there, Sir.

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MarkS's avatar

Yarvin has a "brilliant mind"? Holy fuck! Yarvin is a raving moron. That you take him at all seriously, N.S., drops my respect for you by quite a few floors.

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N.S. Lyons's avatar

Eh, if Yarvin has a problem, it's not his lack of raw brain power. It's that he's the kind of possibly-on-the-spectrum intellectual without the humility, understanding of genuine humanity, or common sense necessary to realize his lofty system-level theories will probably just get a lot of people killed. That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't understand anything about how political power works.

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MarkS's avatar

Seems to me that understanding of how political power works is pretty common. What are Yarvin's insights that a thousand other students of politics had not already figured out? I claim there are zero. Then there are his "lofty system-level theories will probably just get a lot of people killed", if anyone were insane enough to try to implement them. So that all adds up to raving moron in my book. Still shocked that it doesn't in yours.

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Diamond Boy's avatar

Thank you for that fulsome answer. Curtis Yarvin is a rascal, spectacular in his analysis of power and I suspect he is dead impatient with human foibles, so offers up this monarchy as an ironic fuck you to us plebeian humans with a crackle of “that’s all we deserve.” I highly recommend everybody read the “gray mirror”in Curtis Yarvin’s substack it is truly brilliant and unique.

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TR's avatar

For what its worth I feel like he gets carried away and makes these grand sweeping statements about society, politics or international relations that can prove to be pretty wide of the mark.

Some of his World War 2 interpretations are just ridiculous.

The glaring one for me though is how he has repeatedly missed the boat on Russia. He would often advocate US withdrawal from Europe in order to allow Russia to just come in and "take over" - which always seemed odd as their economy is the size of Spains. It indicated (to me at least) a pretty fast and loose style of analysis, that may be prevalent across the rest of his theories but youd never know because theyre not invading Ukraine.

That being said, I love his perspective on power in America and find it very compelling.

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Diamond Boy's avatar

Well said and thank you

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Chris Gast's avatar

Great point about the metaverse owning the universe. These giant corporations have so much wealth and influence, and it’s mostly all generated by cluttering our minds—so much clutter you never stop and really think about this radical difference. It seems the Internet went from a dream of a diffuse community to the same old domination by major players. Although they do provide real services, one wonders what life would look like if they suddenly got wished into the cornfield one day… like 1995? Would we really miss 2022?

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John Storella's avatar

While Waiting for Lyons’ Next Post

1. The end of the Cold War created space for the Successor Ideology to Flourish

During the Cold War, the West was in an existential struggle with the Soviet Union. That struggle was, of course, military. But it was also ideological. Which was the better system, democratic capitalism or Soviet communism? In the West, and, in particular, the United States, this struggle consumed our attention and provided both an interpretive framework for understanding the world (the good West v. the bad communists), and meaning to organize our actions. (“We must defeat the godless communists.”)

The West emerged victorious from the Cold War. But without an organizing theme, the West’s ideological underpinnings – freedom and religion -- lost their power. (Georgi Arbatov, director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Institute for U.S and Canada Studies, said, “Our major secret weapon is to deprive you of an enemy.”)

Into this vacuum of meaning rushed a new moral focus – the evil of oppression. Critical theory provided the philosophical foundation, and the New Faith became ascendant. Its direction and excesses have disturbed conservatives and liberals, alike, in part because they see the woke as myopic, focused only on oppression at home, while ignoring the geopolitical realities of the wider world.

2. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a temporary distraction.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine acted like a wake-up call to this country. It reminded us that there were other threats in the world besides the White Patriarchy. And, at first, the macro-aggression in Ukraine made concerns with microaggressions seem like a quaint luxury. But this change in orientation will not last. The invasion of Ukraine does not represent an existential threat to the United States, and, in any case, it will eventually be over. Unless Russia invades NATO (currently a dim prospect), attention soon will return to the more pressing issues of injustice at home.

3. You Can’t Beat Something With Nothing

Many have noted that the New Faith has many hallmarks of a religion, including a metaphysics, epistemology, and moral code. It has filled the gap left by the decline of religion and of ideological fervor that accelerated after the Cold War. What can the counter-revolution offer as an alternative?

Francis Fukuyama suggests that liberalism offers the best way to manage a culturally diverse society. But liberalism does not provide meaning to life or something to struggle for.

In his new book (which, I admit, I have not yet read) Yoram Hazony apparently suggests a return to government-promoted Judeo-Christian moral traditions. But in a world in which belief in God is seen largely as superstitious, it’s not clear how much traction this will gain.

Hazony also recognized, in his essay, “The Challenge of Marxism,” that Woke principles have a certain appeal because they are grounded in some truth -- there are power differentials between groups, and this power is used to oppress. Any response to the New Faith must recognize and address this.

So where does this leave us? You can’t fight something with nothing. Neither traditional liberalism nor national conservatism seem to offer a compelling alternative into which Woke religious zeal can be diverted. It may be that the New Faith will fall victim to its own excesses, and will burn itself out. But, for the time being, the movement is still on fire.

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Chris Coffman's avatar

I’m still mulling over your April piece on Russia-China-Ukraine-Trans-Atlantis, especially beginning from the section where you quote Marc Andreessen. Meanwhile, what do you make of this, if anything?

https://youtu.be/VA4e0NqyYMw

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Marco Navarro's avatar

On the Death of Ideals:

I just read an in-depth analysis of the problem by a hippie-turned-Orthodox priest (his path seems quite similar to Paul Kingsnorth). He was writing back in the 60s, but the piece is even more timely now. The language and framing is explicitly (Orthodox) Christian, but given that the decline of the West is so closely correlated with the decline of Christianity, I don't see that as a methodological problem:

https://www.oodegr.com/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm

Having read a bit more of Fr. Seraphim's work, he traces the root of the problem all the way back to the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. I'm inclined to agree, insofar as that's the true origin of the Western divergence. I don't think you can make a convincing case for God on a purely rational level. So, as soon as Western Christendom centered reason over tradition and first-hand mystical experience (contrary to the other major revealed religions), everything that followed - Renaissance humanism, the Enlightenment, and Nietzsche - was inevitable.

That same focus on reason also enabled the Scientific Revolution, without which the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible. Which means we can also thank the Scholastics for the eventual dominance of nihilistic Western civilization over the rest of the world, which otherwise might have been unaffected by the West's intellectual crisis.

Makes me realize how spot-on Spengler was when he described the West as Faustian civilization. I don't think you can separate the impulse that gave us dominion over the world from the one that made us lose our souls.

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May 5, 2022
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TR's avatar

Agree 100%.

I remember finally listening to his take on covid/vaccines and was blown away by how badly he missed his own point. As you point out, he is probably aware of the links to his own thesis but daren't pull at the thread incase he becomes the next Jordan Peterson.

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Diamond Boy's avatar

I agree with your point, but as it has been said, discretion is the better part of valour: maybe he values a more quiet existence, the public debate is quite a din.

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May 5, 2022
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Diamond Boy's avatar

Cool

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

Hey i'm inclined to agree w u, but we should also take into account the pressure public apostates from the Left consenus have to face these days: not only would he be tarred and banished as some sort of quasi-bigot a al Jordan Peterson, but assuming he has a wife and kids and they live in Blue areas and attend or are employed by Blue institutions, his newfound status as a heretic would affect them significantly and make them some level of black sheep.

(Just to bolster: I know friends of the Alan Dershowitz family, and when he became pro-Trump, his blackballing extended to his grandchildren! My friends in brownstone Brooklyn would no longer allow their kids to play with the Dershowitz kids.)

I don't know really anything about Jon Haidt, but he seems much more comfortable as an insider offering reasoned critique rather than an outsider offering vehement dissent. Either way, he's still done some good work.

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