My disposition in the old astrological sense of that word is to be, if not indifferent, uninterested.
But not disinterested. My prejudice for the local is on full display. The local is where influence of the non-planetary and non-astral sort is still possible, as many of the contributors here suggest.
I do not mean to say that there is no national stage or that the drama enacted on it has no principal parts. We know perhaps too well that there is such a stage and such actors on it, saying their lines either well or poorly. And the Leviathanic theater that we have is what it is: the work of our own hands, a wooden horse bearing our ruin that we ourselves have pushed and pulled and heaved into our own city. […]
We need not search high and low for proof. This is simply a matter of scale and of the lessons that both scale and place have to teach us, if only we were their worthy pupils. I see no shortcut here, no way around this fact. Taking the crowded frenetic bypass means only that we will never see the center, which, for want of being seen and known, cannot hold.…
So here, then, is another lesson in restraint: to the extent that we cannot refuse and turn resolutely away from the abstract means of communication that so tempt the loose atomistic individuals that Robert Nisbet said we have become, to that extent we will cut ourselves off from an available apprenticeship in civility and citizenship. […]
Now it is no part of my program to legislate against the abstract means. That would be to assume that law can accomplish what only grace can effect. What I would have are people, large numbers of them, who, understanding the dangers of abstraction, willingly turn away from it and refuse its technologies. I would have them start with the comment box and all the various forms of anti-social media on offer. And here I will defend the Miltonic position: we are sufficient to stand though free to fall. However it all played out beneath that Tree of Knowledge, one thing is certain: exercising your freedom by saying “no thank you,” especially to a glozing serpent, can make a big difference. Perhaps all that’s at stake is our civic life and the health of the Republic, which suffers sorely from our lack of restraint and from the abstract forms of communication singing their siren songs.