Fencing Bear at Prayer

Peterson : I’m an odd sort of Christian, I suppose, for a variety of reasons.... There is an idea of the Eternal Soul, and it tends in Christianity to remain somewhat gendered, although there is an idea that it’s the Logos that is redemptive for males and females...and Logos is symbolically represented as masculine. I think that’s because the masculine spirit, so to speak, is freer in some sense than the female spirit, because it’s more tightly tied to the necessity of procreation and so forth. It’s something like that....  Societies have posited for a very long period of time that there’s something about human consciousness that transcends the limitations of the finite self. And you also mentioned the use of psychedelics, and obviously that was part of your experience of discovery. There’s a reasonable amount of evidence, and most of it was compiled by a man whose name, if I remember, was Wasson, who was an amateur mycologist, a student of mushrooms... R. Gordon Wasson . And he c...

It was just a small thing, the least of things, a thing hardly to be noticed. Not to be marked as an enemy of the empire, all one had to do was throw a bit of incense on the brazier set before the statue of the emperor. What could be easier than to offer a bit of scented smoke and a dribble of wine to prove one’s loyalty to the ruler of the world? Especially when to refuse meant death . The temptation must have been overwhelming—all it would cost was your immortal soul . What it looks like to be up against the world.  All he had to do was take off his hat.  Was that so much to ask?

Pray. Read the scriptures. Go to Mass. Worship the LORD Jesus Christ, the Son of God Most High. (Image: Nicholas of Lyra, Postillae, ca. 1402 [ Manchester, John Rylands Library, Latin MS 30 ]) For further reflections on seeing God as medieval Christians saw Him, go here .

Vox Day talked last night on his livestream about how American conservatism was doomed as a political movement from the beginning because, even as defined by Russell Kirk, it was only ever an attitude, never a coherent political philosophy. Kirk himself said so. He called conservatism a “persuasion,” without “ideology,” “Holy Writ,” or “dogmata,” and he suggested that “conservative” as a word be used only as an adjective—a modifier, not a substantive noun. And indeed, as Vox pointed out, as defined by Kirk, conservatism has no substance. It is a stance against , not an argument for . In Kirk’s own words : The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles...

If I concentrate hard enough, I can trigger one. No, not an SJW—although wouldn’t that be fun ? A hot flash. Oh, look, here it comes . I got the first one about a year ago, but they hit full force only in April, after my meeting with my chair of department about my promotion review . For weeks after that, I could barely sleep. Every night would mean waking up, not just in sweats, but in panic. Why is the apartment so fucking hot?! The night sweats are bad, but the worst are the ones that come when I am trying to think. My guess—based on a quick surf around the menopause sites—is that it has something to do with testosterone, but maybe I got that from a book I was reading about motivation for winning. Aha, found it : “Testosterone is  motivation,” said Dr. Jack von Honk, in a presentation to his colleagues....  “Without testosterone, there is no motivation at all. When you take some testosterone sublingually, you’re ready to go, you’re up for it, there’s no fear, ...

I have had a fair amount of fall-out thanks to the video that I did with my friends about Vox Day’s book on Jordan Peterson . If you have watched the video, you know that I agree with Milo and Vox in their critique of the Good Professor. Like Milo and Vox, I do not see Jordan as on “our” side . Quite the reverse. I became wary of Professor Peterson about this time last year, after spending over a month trying to make sense of what happened in his interview with Cathy Newman. I became increasingly suspicious as I watched his interactions with Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin on their shows , and I lost all faith in him as an ally when he threw Milo under the bus rather than argue with Bari Weiss about whether Milo was “possibly [a racist].” By the time Professor Peterson made his Kavanaugh tweet, the camel was already on the ground, crippled and unable to rise. I do not think Professor Peterson  believes in God by any definition that I would recognize . ( Hint : If you care more a...

This post was meant to be about how the New Testament is generically fanfiction, but I got stuck almost immediately doing a Google search on whether anybody had made that claim before.  Lo, and behold! It has already been discussed on Reddit , albeit without the cool references I was planning to give. And then I lost my mojo. And wanted to start reading my social media instead. I think I understand what is happening. This isn’t writer’s block per se . Not in the sense that I suffered it ten or so years ago, when after a year on leave I overworked myself  into a depression . Then I was anxious about writing because I wasn’t sure what my big argument was going to be. ( I figured it out—see my book ! ) Now I know what my argument is going to be—my big argument, the one I am doing the background reading for in  my teaching —but writing—even writing a blogpost as a warm-up—just seems so... slow. Painfully slow. Tortuously slow. Excruciatingly slow. I'm sure...