Geoff Dyer:

Finally, in Camus, who made the most immense journey from his origins, I found someone who stated, in the most affirmative and human terms, the ways in which he remained dependent on them. This understanding did not come painlessly but eventually, in a sentiment that is wholly alien to the likes of Osborne, he achieved “something priceless: a heart free of bitterness.”

That is why I came here [Algiers]: to claim kin with him, to be guided by him.

I walk toward the sea and never quite come to it. Always you are separated from the sea by an expanse of one thing or another: docks or roads. No trace of the plage de l’Arsenal where Camus glimpsed for the first time the beauty of the Mediterranean. Now there are only the all-consuming docks. Gradually the sky becomes stained with clouds. The call to prayer comes over a loudspeaker, distorted and mechanical, like a factory whistle ordering the next shift to work.

Eventually I come to a stretch of land—I don’t know what else to call it—by the sea. It is not part of the port but, although the sea laps against an area of sand, it is not a beach. This is sand in the building-site sense of the word. There is rubble and rubbish everywhere. Rush-hour clouds are queuing across the sky.

Matthew Arnold, staring out at the Channel, thought of Sophocles and the sea of faith that had since receded. I think of Camus and the beauty that each year is pushed further and further out into the oil-filmed sea. As the waves lap in I detect a note of weariness in the endlessly repeated motion. Perhaps the sea never crashed vigorously here but it is difficult not to think some vital force has been sucked from it.

Camus concludes his famous study of absurdity by saying we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Easier to imagine him here, thinking “Is it worth it?” for if he rolled his rock up this slope he would come to a heap of rubbish—and when it rolled back it would end up in another even bigger heap. Easier to imagine Sisyphus looking forward to the cigarette that will make his lungs heave under the effort of work and which, when he has tossed away the butt, will add to the rubbish below. But perhaps there is consolation even in this: the higher the mound of rubbish the less distance to heave his rock—until there is no hill to climb, just a level expanse of trash. This is progress.

As I continue walking the sun bursts out again, making the bank of cloud smolder green-black, luminous over the sea. Perched be-tween the road and the sea, between sun and cloud, some boys are playing football in a prairie blaze of light. The pitch glows the color of rust. The ball is kicked high and all the potential of these young lives is concentrated on it. As the ball hangs there, moon-white against the wall of cloud, everything in the world seems briefly up for grabs and I am seized by two contradictory feelings: there is so much beauty in the world it is incredible that we are ever miserable for a moment; there is so much shit in the world that it is incredible we are ever happy for a moment.

René Girard:

Modern interpreters certainly see that everything in the Kingdom of God comes down to the project of ridding men of violence. But because they conceive of violence in the wrong way, they do not appreciate the rigorous objectivity of the methods which Jesus advocates. …

… Jesus invites all men to devote themselves to the project of getting rid of violence, a project conceived with reference to the true nature of violence, taking into account the illusions it fosters, the methods by which it gains ground, and all the laws that we have verified over the course of these discussions.

Violence is the enslavement of a pervasive lie; it imposes upon men a falsified vision not only of God but also of everything else. And that is indeed why it is a closed kingdom. Escaping from violence is escaping from this kingdom into another kingdom, whose existence the majority of people do not even suspect. This is the Kingdom of love, which is also the domain of the true God, the Father of Jesus, of whom the prisoners of violence cannot even conceive.

To leave violence behind, it is necessary to give up the idea of retribution; it is therefore necessary to give up forms of conduct that have always seemed to be natural and legitimate. For example, we think it quite fair to respond to good dealings with good dealings, and to evil dealings with evil, but this is precisely what all the communities on the planet have always done, with familiar results. People imagine that to escape from violence it is sufficient to give up any kind of violent initiative, but since no one in fact thinks of himself as taking this initiative—since all violence has a mimetic character, and derives or can be thought to derive from a first violence that is always perceived as originating with the opponent—this act of renunciation is no more than a sham, and cannot bring about any kind of change at all. Violence is always perceived as being a legitimate reprisal or even self-defence. So what must be given up is the right to reprisals and even the right to what passes, in a number of cases, for legitimate defence. Since the violence is mimetic, and no one ever feels responsible for triggering it initially, only by an unconditional renunciation can we arrive at the desired result:

And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return (Luke 6, 33-35).

If we interpret the gospel doctrine in the light of our own observations about violence, we can see that it explains, in the most clear and concise fashion, all that people must do in order to break with the circularity of closed societies, whether they be tribal, national, philosophical or religious. There is nothing missing and there is no superfluous detail. This doctrine is completely realistic. It envisages perfectly all that is implied in going beyond the ‘metaphysical closure’, and it never falls into the associated errors of modern fanaticism, which misunderstands the ambiguity and the ubiquity of violence, and invariably limits its indictment either to the loss of sacrificial order or to the presence of that order, either to unruliness alone or to rules alone, in the belief that to triumph over violence is simply a matter of violently eliminating one or other—either by curbing individual impulses or by taking the opposite path and ‘liberating’ them in the expectation that this act will establish peace in our time.

Because they have no knowledge of violence and the role that it plays in human life, these commentators sometimes imagine that the Gospels preach a sort of natural morality that men, being naturally good, would respect of their own accord if there were no ‘wicked’ people to prevent them from doing so, and sometimes they imagine that the Kingdom of God is a kind of Utopia, a dream of perfection invented by some gentle dreamer who was incapable of understanding the ground rules upon which humankind has always operated.

No one can see that the true nature of violence is deduced with implacable logic, from the simple and single rule of the Kingdom. No one can see that disobeying or obeying this rule gives rise to two kingdoms which cannot communicate with one another, since they are separated by a real abyss. Mankind can cross this abyss, but to do so all men together should adopt the single rule of the Kingdom of God.

Nick Cattogio:

And it’s a consolation to imagine that something like this could hurt Trump. If you find it hard to cope with what the United States has become, you might understandably retreat into nostalgic fantasy about Americans holding a politician’s sexually suggestive correspondence to the most infamous pervert in American history against him.…

Weak consolation. He quotes Andrew Egger:

In a way, Donald Trump and his allies have spent their entire political lives preparing for this moment. The whole miserable decade of “alternative facts,” of witch hunts, of flooding the zone with sh-t—it all amounted to a long, powerful education for his base. It’s a training in a certain kind of zen meditation, in which stories damaging to Trump pass from the eyes and ears directly out of the body without ever intersecting the brain. By now, the base has gotten in their 10,000 hours. They’ve become masters of the craft. They can perform all sorts of remarkable feats—the media-cope equivalent of lying on beds of nails while cinderblocks are smashed on their chests. These cinderblocks, they whisper serenely, are just a liberal plot. If I pay attention, the Democrats win.

This is just the way things are now. Catoggio:

Think of American government as a big neighborhood. The neighborhood has started to go to hell. Its residents are adjusting their expectations for it accordingly.…

This is why there’s been so little outcry about him pulling off the presidential equivalent of a bank heist, I think. If a business in a good neighborhood gets held up, everyone talks about it. But if a business in a bad neighborhood gets held up, it’s barely news. What can the locals realistically do except sigh and say, “Yeah, that happens now”?

The president is monetizing his office in broad daylight to the tune of billions per year? Yeah, that happens now.

No wonder, then, that Americans can’t get excited about Trump’s history with Epstein. If he were a person of good character committed to ethical government, it’d be earth-shaking to find him sending risqué letters to his child-molester pal. As it is, it’s like finding out that the leader of the local gang that runs the neighborhood is involved in a prostitution racket. You might not approve of it but you’re certainly not surprised.

That’s just how this neighborhood is nowadays.

It’s worth noting that in that last part he’s talking about why the centrist swing voters don’t seem to care much.

I’m convinced that this is the way things have been for decades before Trump, only it was slightly less obvious and less extreme. If the idea of reaping what you sow has any basis in politics, then we the voters are getting exactly, exactly, exactly what we’ve long deserved.

Kevin Williamson:

My thesis here isn’t that the secretary of health and human services acts like a crazy person because he takes drugs—it is that he takes drugs because he is, in fact, a crazy person, one whose career as public fraud, like his career as a private junkie, is characterized by “manic-like presentations defined by irritability, aggressiveness, euphoria, grandiose beliefs, hyperactivity, and reckless or dangerous behavior.” 

Kennedy’s thinking is junkie thinking: When within the space of a few sentences he insisted that COVID vaccines kill peopleand that Donald Trump deserves a Nobel prize for his role in implementing Operation Warp Speed, which developed the COVID vaccines, Kennedy took umbrage (“defined by irritability, aggressiveness”) at the notion that these two positions must be mutually exclusive. He is very much like [David Foster] Wallace’s addicts with their sense of metaphysical uniqueness and specialness: Everything that he wants to be true must be true and true at the same time, simply because he is “exempt from the laws of physics and statistics”—and logic—“that ironly govern everybody else.”

Václav Havel, August 21, 1982:

Dear Olga,

We live in an age in which there is a general turning away from Being: our civilization, founded on a grand upsurge of science and technology, those great intellectual guides on how to conquer the world at the cost of losing touch with Being, transforms man its proud creator into a slave of his consumer needs, breaks him up into isolated functions, dissolves him in his existence-in-the-world and thus deprives him not only of his human integrity and his autonomy but ultimately any influence he may have had over his own “automatic responses.” The crisis of today’s world, obviously, is a crisis of human responsibility (both responsibility for oneself and responsibility “toward” something else) and thus it is a crisis of human identity as well. But a warning here: all this does not mean in the least that the experience of Being and the orientation toward it have vanished entirely from the structure of contemporary humanity. On the contrary: as that which in humanity is failing and breaking down, and which is constantly betrayed, duped and deluded by humanity, they are both, in fact, latently present in the structure of humanity, be it only in the form of fissures and faults that must be filled at all costs to preserve appearances—both on the surface and “inside.” The point is that morality seldom sees itself as purely utilitarian, and even less would it admit publicly to this. It always pretends, or tries to persuade itself, that its roots go deeper, even in matters less extreme than fanaticism. Would anyone, for example, dare to deny that he had a conscience? There are no two ways about it: the “voice of Being” has not fallen silent—we know it summons us, and as human beings, we cannot pretend not to know what it is calling us to. It is just that these days, it is easier to cheat, silence or lie to that voice (think of the many ways science gives us to do this!). The source of this latent regard for Being, therefore, is not merely convention (that is, a reified morality of traditions which, from the point of view of our existence-in-the-world, it would be a pointless faux pas to ignore publicly) but rather it lies deeper: in our thrownness into our source in Being from which—so long as we remain people and do not become mere robots—we cannot extricate ourselves and which—though it might exist merely as “memories of memories,” “homesickness for homesickness” or “longing for longing”—exposes us to that voice. And regardless of how selfishly we act, of how indifferent we remain to everything that does not bring us immediate benefit (the kind that is fully rooted in the world of phenomena), regardless of how exclusively we relate to our utilitarian “here” and “now,” we always feel, in some corner of our spirit at least, that we should not act that way and that therefore we must find a way to defend and justify our actions, and by some “mental trick,” gloss over its disaccord with something we are simply no longer capable of striving toward. It makes no difference whether, to that end, we invoke the somewhat mystical claim that “all is lost anyway” or on the contrary, the illusion that our bad behavior serves a good cause.

All of this—the turning away from Being, the crisis of the absolute horizon, of genuine responsibility and thus of genuine identity as well, along with heightened efforts to “satisfy” the betrayed “voice of being” by mystification—is transferred or projected, understandably, into the behavior of various “interexistential” formations as well: society, na-tions, classes, social strata, political movements and systems, social power groups, forces and organisms and ultimately even states and governments themselves. For not only do all these formations shape and direct contemporary humanity, humanity shapes and directs them as well, since they are ultimately the product and image of humanity. And just as man turns away from Being, so entire large social organisms turn away from it—if I may put it that way—having surrendered to the same steadily increasing temptation of existence-in-the-world, of entities, aims and “realities” (whose attractions are merely strengthened by surrendering to them). And just as man conceals his turning away from the world and himself by pretending that it is not a turning away at all, so these social organisms hide their turning away from the world and themselves in an analogical fashion. For this reason, we may observe how social, political and state systems, and whole societies, are inevitably becoming alienated from themselves. The difficult and complex task of serving primary moral ideals is reduced to the less demanding task of serving projects intended to fulfill those ideals in a concrete way; and, when such projects have won the day, there is a further reduction to the even more comfortable task of serving systems allegedly designed to carry these projects out; and finally, it degenerates into a situation, common enough now, in which the power that directs these systems (or more precisely “possesses” them) simply looks out for its own interests, or else the systems, in a purely utilitarian fashion, adapt themselves to the demands of that power. By now, the behavior of social power, of various establishments and finally of whole societies (which either identify with the given power, or adapt to it, or simply surrender to it) has become utterly self-serving, alienated many times over from the original ideals and has degenerated into the “realities of existence-in-the-world,” and at the same time, of course, it still persists in operating in the name of the morality of the original—and long since betrayed—ideals. One consequence of this alienating process is the enormous conflict between words and deeds so prevalent today: everyone talks about freedom, democracy, humanity, justice, human rights, universal equality and happiness, about peace and saving the world from nuclear apocalypse, and protecting the environment and life in general—and at the same time, everyone—more or less, consciously or unconsciously, in one way or another—serves those values and ideals only to the extent necessary to serve himself, i.e., his “worldly” interests—personal interests, group interests, power interests, property interests, state or great-power interests. Thus the world becomes a chessboard for this cynical and utterly self-serving “interplay of interests,” and ultimately there are no practices, whether economic, political, diplomatic, military or espionage, which, as means sanctified by an allegedly universal human end, are not permissible if they serve the particular interests of the group that carries them out. Under the guise of the intellectually respectable notion of “responsibility for everything” (i.e., for the “welfare of mankind”)—that is, pretending to relate to the absolute horizon—huge and uncontrollable forces and powers are in fact responsible only to the particular horizon from which they derive their power (e.g., to the establishment that put them in power). Pretending to serve the “general well-being of mankind,” they serve only their own pragmatic interests, and they are oriented exclusively toward “doing well in the world” and expanding and proliferating further—wherein that very expansion and proliferation which flows directly from the expansive essence of focusing on existence-in-the-world is interpreted as service to “higher things”—to universal freedom, justice and well-being. This entire mendacious “world of appearances,” of grandiose words and phraseological rituals is, again, merely the tax that one who has surrendered to existence-in-the-world pays— on the social level this time—to his “recollection of conscience,” i.e., to his duty to respond, in this formal and ritualistic fashion, at least, to the languishing “voice of Being” in his indolent heart.

The tension between the world of words and the real practices of those in power is not just directly experienced by millions of ordinary, powerless people, nor thought about only by intellectuals, whose voices those in power either ignore (in some places) or pay “too much” attention to (in others), nor is it pointed out only by minorities in revolt. The power in society can actually see it better than anyone else, but only in others, never in itself. In such circumstances, however, it is not surprising that no one believes anyone and that everyone uses the contradiction between someone else’s words and deeds to justify a deepening of the same contradictions in himself. It may even appear that those with fewer inhibitions in this regard will ultimately triumph and crush the others. So the power structures apparently have no other choice than to sink deeper and deeper into this vicious maelstrom, and contemporary people—if they take any interest at all in such “great matters” —apparently have no other choice than to wait around until the final inhibition drops away.

Naturally I am not underestimating the importance of international talks on arms limitation. I’m afraid, however, that we will never attain a peace that will permanently eliminate the threat of a nuclear catastrophe as long as mutual trust among people, nations and states is not revitalized to a degree far greater than has been the case at any time in the past. And that, of course, won’t happen until the terrifying abyss between words and deeds is closed. And that, in turn, won’t happen until something radical— I would even say revolutionary—changes in the very structure and “soul” of humanity today. In other words, until man—standing on the brink of the abyss—recovers from the massive betrayal he commits every day against his own nature, and goes back to where he has always stood in the good moments of his history: to that which provides the foundations for that dramatic essence of his humanity (as “separated being”), that is, to Being as the firm vanishing point of his striving, to that absolute horizon of his relating.

But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? I agree with Levinas when he says that responsibility cannot be preached, but only borne, and that the only possible place to begin is with oneself. It may sound strange, but it is true: it is I who must begin. One thing about it, however, is interesting: once I begin—that is, once I try—here and now, right where I am, not excusing myself by saying that things would be easier elsewhere, without grand speeches and ostentatious gestures, but all the more persistently—to live in harmony with the “voice of Being,” as I understand it within myself—as soon as I begin that, I suddenly discover, to my surprise, that I am neither the only one, nor the first, nor the most important one to have set out upon that road. For the hope opened up in my heart by this turning toward Being has opened my eyes as well to all the hopeful things my vision, blinded by the brilliance of “worldly” temptations, could not or did not wish to see, because it would have undermined the traditional argument of all those who have given up already: that all is lost anyway. Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.

I kiss you,
Vašek

Steve Robinson:

These are some maxims I’ve come to after many years of imbalance, lack of discernment, unwise choices, pride, delusions, zeal, laziness, despondency, independence and co-dependence. 

We are called to self-giving, not self-harm. 

We are called to self-lessness, not self-destruction.

We are called to spiritual disciplines, not spiritual masochism.

We are called to deny the flesh, not mutilate it.

We are called to lay aside all earthly cares, not all earthly necessities.

We are called to fasting, not starvation.

We are called to sacrifice our personal agendas, not our families and relationships.

We are called to give up our egos, not our mental health.

We are called to be godly, not God.

We are called to prayer, not a monastic rule and schedule.

We are called to be present for people, not omnipresent.

We are called to be strong, not omnipotent.

We are called to give our cloak if asked for a coat, but not to go naked.

We are called to step out on faith, not walk off a cliff.

We are called to not judge, not to be suckers.

We are called to walk the second mile with someone, not to carry them the entire distance.

We are called to help people, not support their lifestyle. 

If you are doing the latter of these you are not being a saint, you are being a “martyr”, but not for God.

There is dysfunctionally/neurotic self-martyrdom that is chosen or manufactured. There are people who cannot live without drama, a cause, controversy, or someone/something to “save” requiring great sacrifices. And there are legitimately un-self-orchestrated difficult circumstances that require sacrifice beyond what you thought you were capable of enduring by the grace of God.

If you don’t know which is which in your life, perhaps you should look at finding a spiritual director, or therapist, or even a trusted spiritual friend that you will accept them calling BS on your “stuff” and work it out. It won’t happen over-night and without its own kind of suffering. But the middle path of pain is wisdom: knowing that both an easy life and a painful life can kill us spiritually if we have no discernment. If you die from suffering try to make sure it’s redemptive for yourself and the world and not an indictment of your poor judgment, choices and spiritual discernment. 

But… in the end, in general, our intentions for the choices we made were good, even in great obliviousness and at great expense. And no matter how we chose to die and from what, God raises the dead, no matter how dead we are and how dead-end our efforts were.

David Bromwich:

War makes violence a habit: the horror disappears in the routine, and we come to accept it as part of human nature. And there is a shade of truth in that acceptance. War appeals to the propensity (keener in men than in women) to cut short all reasoning and go fast and hard into a physical assault that stops all argument. The violent thrust bespeaks decision, a pride beyond challenge in the person who commits it: the act acquits itself, and postpones any weighing of motives. War thus forms an exception to the rule of empirical prudence, in favor of a vainglory that human nature has always found ways to permit. War stands outside the usual priority of moral considerations. It must often be, for many people, a relief from the day-to-day routines of work and responsibility. And in the conditions of modernity, where inaction is the normal human state, war appeals to the craving for action. We are taught early that nothing is so honorable as to act decisively in an approved cause; and war is the preeminent instance of such action—as much for the spectacle it affords as for the change it effects.

But there is also a quasi-moral seduction in the violence of war. It commits the individual who supports the otherwise abstract entity that is a nation. It makes each of us a little bigger. Even in a vicarious war such as the American fight against Russia by alliance with Ukraine, the consciousness of sympathy links the anonymous citizen with a remote effect: a satisfaction that is hardly available in the ordinary rounds of social engagement or political work. As a site of impressive action, in which one person can see the difference he makes, the only rival of war might be the construction of a new city. But that is a long-term ameliorative project that requires imagination and the passage of time. Destruction is faster.

I’m certainly not onboard with every point he makes in this essay, and like many in the anti-intervention camp, he misses much of the forest for the criticisms. But still… Oof:

And the program of drone assassinations, initiated by George W. Bush and greatly expanded in the two terms of Barack Obama… “Terror Tuesday” meetings, led by John Brennan at the CIA and President Obama, arrived in the latter years of the War on Terror: a fair alternative (it was thought) to the Bush policy of capturing terror suspects for transportation to an indefinite imprisonment in Guantanamo. Though their names were not always known—a pattern of suspicious contacts was enough to convict—they could now be killed individually by presidential command. Death may somehow have seemed cleaner than the kidnapping and torture and the consequent twilight legal status of a suspect who fitted the category of “enemy combatant.”

Two things must strike an American looking at a pattern that now extends from the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to the three-year trench war in Ukraine. First, to repeat, these wars have all been preventive wars. They have had to travel an extraordinary distance in the cause of safety. The other curious feature is the pride with which American leaders have announced that most of these wars required no sacrifice of American lives. (This is said in a bluff shorthand: we have no “boots on the ground.”) All the killing and dying is done by other people.

Sam Kriss:

Of course, Don Quixote is also the origin of the realist psychological novel. By repeating the forms of chivalric romance, its knight created something completely new. For the three hundred years between Don Quixote and the emergence of film, the psychological novel shaped how subjectivity thought about itself. I think John Hinckley might have done something similar. In the future, we might remember him as one of the heralds of the internet age.

It’s not just school shooters and spree killers: we are all John Hinckley now. This is the promise of the smartphone. No more passive masses staring at one glowing celluloid image. Instead, everyone gets to turn themselves into an object. Arrange yourself over your highly curated Instagram grid. Pull the appropriate faces on TikTok. Add filters, augment with AI.…Look at the screen too much and the odds of bloodshed start rising. The internet permeates the world with a diffuse, secularized violence and some people, if they’re desperate or bitter enough, will always follow its logic right to the end. But for everyone else, the gun is no longer really necessary; being online means confronting a lifeless object that happens to be yourself. Just look into the front-facing camera, take a picture, and there you are.

John Hinckley has a YouTube channel. He films himself in his house in Virginia, performing songs about love and redemption, or delivering short homilies on peace and harmony to his subscribers. There are just over forty thousand of them. Sometimes he’s shirtless. Every video starts the same way. “Hello everybody,” he says, “hope you’re doing great.” He reads the comments. Most of the time he’s wearing sunglasses, but you can still see it in his eyes. He loves it. The same dream he’s been dreaming since he was nine years old, to melt into the magnetic field and pulse through infinite space. It’s all real. What an incredible world he’s made.

Jordan Hall, on the virtues of tradition conservatism the rearguard:

In contrast, the rearguard I’m envisioning isn’t especially ambitious. Its members are neither cool nor subversive. They seem out-of-step compared to their peers — behind, literally and figuratively — an unenviable group with an inglorious mission: watch everybody’s back, clean up everybody’s messes, and don’t get captured. Mostly they second-guess the thoughts and actions of everyone ahead of them. Way up at the front, where the air turns hot and hallucinatory, and enthusiasm melts into groupthink, the vanguard says, Look at this new thing! Look at that new thing! But the air in the rearguard is noisome and dust-filled, and the wizened denizens can only mutter, Lo, there is nothing new under the sun.