Referred here by Paul Kingsnorth. Great piece - so achingly, beautifully sad.
Thanks also for your characterization of the woke. I needed that - they were becoming a little too much of a cartoon that was easy to hate/resent. Your recognition of the mourning at the root of their angst really helps me better humanize and sympathize. We all do evil, but for most of us, it starts with something very human and broken. Doesn't make it less evil, but can make it easier to be merciful.
Thanks! I struggle to keep a humane eye, what Weil would call 'attention', on people acting in the public domain; so those parts were partly just about reminding myself of everyone's humanity. I'm very glad if it helped you in the same way.
Thank you for your interesting thoughts. I am also referred by Paul Kingsnorth and very grateful that I was. I look forward to reading more of your writings.
I particularly agree with what you say about how people tend to think (or not think) and react to death. One thing that upsets me quite a lot is when i hear people not even use the word 'death' when someone now dies. In fact it has got so exaggerated now that 'passed way' has been replaced with just 'passed' which lacks the truth, gravitas and solemnity the occasion deserves.
On woke, I like your theory but do not know if I agree that it is a grief for a liberal paradise that has not arrived (I hope I interpret you correctly). Many of them do not appear to be liberal at all and seem the kind of people who in another era would have joined the Hitler youth or Mao's cultural revolution. Am I being too harsh?
Your piece gives much food for thought, thank you.
I think perhaps you are being too harsh in one sense and not in another. You are not being too harsh on the sense of the conformism underlying a lot of progressive politics or how dangerous it could be.
I don't, though, think most of the participants are consciously aiming at totalitarianism. Obviously, there are extremists; but most, I think, genuinely do believe that increasingly repressive steps are necessary to protect against right-wing totalitarianism. That doesn't seem plausible to me, and my thoughts on grief for an imagined future are partly trying to understand why it seems plausible to them.
But are they librrals - their actions reveal a distinctively authoritarian tendency? As for uniforms I fully expect to read of a university union that has issued a shirt/cap/badge by which the campus 'guardians of acceptable speech and behaviour' can be identified and wield their 'authority'.
Wonderful post. As someone whose childhood memories are all from Yorkshire, where I was born and bred, I find your words especially poignant. (Came here after Paul Kingsnorth mentioned you in his latest piece.)
This is a really terrific piece of writing, and spot on.
Thank you! Coming from you, that really means something.
Referred here by Paul Kingsnorth. Great piece - so achingly, beautifully sad.
Thanks also for your characterization of the woke. I needed that - they were becoming a little too much of a cartoon that was easy to hate/resent. Your recognition of the mourning at the root of their angst really helps me better humanize and sympathize. We all do evil, but for most of us, it starts with something very human and broken. Doesn't make it less evil, but can make it easier to be merciful.
Thanks! I struggle to keep a humane eye, what Weil would call 'attention', on people acting in the public domain; so those parts were partly just about reminding myself of everyone's humanity. I'm very glad if it helped you in the same way.
Makes me think of a line from a Herman Melville poem: "Beware the people weeping/When they bare the iron hand."
Thank you for your interesting thoughts. I am also referred by Paul Kingsnorth and very grateful that I was. I look forward to reading more of your writings.
I particularly agree with what you say about how people tend to think (or not think) and react to death. One thing that upsets me quite a lot is when i hear people not even use the word 'death' when someone now dies. In fact it has got so exaggerated now that 'passed way' has been replaced with just 'passed' which lacks the truth, gravitas and solemnity the occasion deserves.
On woke, I like your theory but do not know if I agree that it is a grief for a liberal paradise that has not arrived (I hope I interpret you correctly). Many of them do not appear to be liberal at all and seem the kind of people who in another era would have joined the Hitler youth or Mao's cultural revolution. Am I being too harsh?
Your piece gives much food for thought, thank you.
I think perhaps you are being too harsh in one sense and not in another. You are not being too harsh on the sense of the conformism underlying a lot of progressive politics or how dangerous it could be.
I don't, though, think most of the participants are consciously aiming at totalitarianism. Obviously, there are extremists; but most, I think, genuinely do believe that increasingly repressive steps are necessary to protect against right-wing totalitarianism. That doesn't seem plausible to me, and my thoughts on grief for an imagined future are partly trying to understand why it seems plausible to them.
Thanks for your interesting comments!
Hardly fair to tar the woke liberals with the potential Nazi brush when a certain number of the extreme right wing are actual brown shirts.
But are they librrals - their actions reveal a distinctively authoritarian tendency? As for uniforms I fully expect to read of a university union that has issued a shirt/cap/badge by which the campus 'guardians of acceptable speech and behaviour' can be identified and wield their 'authority'.
"The dry stone walls, always slowly collapsing, call each generation to raise their rocks again."
This is beautiful imagery, and really speaks to me both metaphorically and literally having recently rebuilt dry stone walls on our property!
So glad I stopped by to read such a thought provoking essay. Thank you.
Evocative, haunting and prophetic. Thank you.
Thank you
Wonderful post. As someone whose childhood memories are all from Yorkshire, where I was born and bred, I find your words especially poignant. (Came here after Paul Kingsnorth mentioned you in his latest piece.)
I think it is possible too. You might like this article: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/forgiveness/forgiving-dr-mengele
Me too, but it's good to have exemplars!