The cause of the environment is not, in itself, a left-wing cause at all. It is not about “liberating” or empowering the victim, but about safeguarding resources. It is not about “progress” or “equality” but about conservation and equilibrium. Its following may be young and dishevelled; but that is largely because people in suits have [...]
Half-knowledge is more victorious than whole knowledge: it understands things as being more simple than they are and this renders its opinions more easily intelligible and more convincing. –Nietzsche Several years ago, I heard a scientist being interviewed on NPR declare that humans are “just sacks of rapidly degenerating amino acids,” or something similar. I [...]
Permanence is not merely a matter of taste—something to be embraced by the sedentary and eschewed by the restless—but a deep societal value. It is the guardian of family, tradition, practical wisdom, environment, and culture On the whole, it would appear to be for the best that the great majority of human beings should go [...]
As Thoreau’s “Walden” testifies in every chapter, man can live simply or extravagantly, in freedom or in bondage, at frantic speed or deliberate leisureliness, according to fashion and convention or in tune with higher laws, in the midst of beauty or drabness, a poetic life or mechanical existence, and either a human or dehumanized life. [...]
Following the release of Pope Francis’ encyclical on human society and the environment, many have lauded what it says about the climate. The Sierra Club pontificated that “Pope Francis’ guidance as a pastor and a teacher shines a light on the moral obligation we all share to address the climate crisis that transcends borders and [...]
It is our duty to understand and self-consciously conserve a natural process of imagination that has proceeded for an extraordinarily long time. This process has not been uniform nor is its continued emergence inevitable. It has changed its properties markedly since the origin of consciousness, which is a property characterized best by us. Its conservation [...]
This is what the Romans had in mind when they spoke of gravitas: They noticed that some men have weight—and they naturally make others feel it. To the Roman way of thinking gravitas is a virtue. And it’s a virtue because it is useful for certain things. For one thing, it can help you maintain [...]
Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, like all conservatives, has a tender affinity for precious things that are passing away. Sometimes they can be preserved and brought to new life. At other times, they may only be preserved in memory for another generation such as ours, who may open the record and feel them in our own hearts, [...]
It was the late Stratford Caldecott who first struck up my interest in Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World by Charles, the Prince of Wales. Caldecott described the book as the coffee table manifesto of traditionalism. After my own reading, I can only concur with his description. For the traditionalist, this book’s [...]
In Yosemite Valley one can walk for miles through a meadow surrounded by granite monoliths, cliffs, and forested mountain peaks. The view changes every time one turns, but remains stunning. A relatively short distance away is a hike to Yosemite Falls—one of the world’s tallest—for views of water and mist tumbling over sheer walls of [...]
Wendell Berry addressed faith, agrarianism, and why he hates “environmentalism” in a ninety minute conversation with Centre College Professor Eric Mount. The two men sat in angled wingback chairs before a crowd of more than two hundred listeners in the sumptuous surroundings of Louisville’s Crescent Hill Baptist Church. In true professorial fashion, Mount made sure [...]
Don’t worry. Be happy. Live in the present. The philosopher Rousseau said that was the natural condition of man, before he was screwed up by self-consciousness, time, awareness of death, and delayed gratification. So the key to happiness is to be really, really stupid. The Epicurean philosopher says the rational person can achieve the same [...]
I was out driving this morning, doing some errands. A car ahead of me was going about 30 in a 55 speed limit zone, and as usual I was annoyed. Going so slow, I was forced to look around. I saw businesses working, signs that told me where I was. A man who recently bought [...]
In one of the finest books dealing with T.S. Eliot, The Art of Eliot (1949), Helen Gardner attempted to explain the poet’s employment of the language of his day. “Our age, with its undigested technical vocabulary, its misuse of metaphor, and its servitude to cliche, cannot be regarded as propitious for a poet. It is part of [...]