Letters from Ithavoll

The nature of sudden collapse is that it is always preceded by gradual decay that few notice because they have nothing against which to compare the present conditions of life. This is why the young are particularly susceptible to status quo bias. As someone from an older generation, who's witnessed the sweep of events during a pivotal period, I believe decline can be limned. But circumspection is required. Collapse doesn't happen, and doesn't happen, and doesn't happen... until it does. This is how it often goes. Vesuvius was quiescent long enough for Pompeii to have have been built in its shadow, the illusion of its benignity. The forces behind our malaise are certainly vested in their own survival and enrichment. Some see decay as the advance of the new. For those who worship novelty, this looks like "progress." The fragility of the extant anti-culture is often overestimated by sanguine counter-revolutionaries. Scale and inertia matter. Yet one thing is ...

Why, Shakespeare could have come from any nationality, you see. It's only appropriate we depict him with a golden tan. If you think about it, he merely  happened to be an Englishman. We can't treat accidents as essentials. What matters is Shakespeare's "universal spirit." In fact, since Shakespeare belongs to the world, it's actually racist to try to nationally appropriate him. He's as much the property of China or Zimbabwe as he is of Britain. More so, given the historic wrongs of the white race, which can only be compensated for by a re-appropriation of the stolen literary and artistic gifts of the developing world, which were unfairly distributed in the first place. To deny them their Shakespeare is the sort of cultural colonization we're fighting, and that every supporter of equality should loudly condemn. Q: What about Gabriel Garcia Marquez? A: An immortal representative of the Columbian genius, of course.

Robotics and AI are eliminating lower wage jobs , and will continue to do so. No economist of any standing disputes this claim any longer. Instead, the rear guard of the status quo has changed its tactic from denial outright to that of the lullaby. Sure, the precipitous drop in the cost of automation is affecting employment, but it’s all going to be ok. Trust us. We’re the experts. Thus goes the tune. Bedside, liberal academics offer charming fairy tales such as “re-skilling” and “up-skilling” -all based on a presumption of IQ equality, or at least its mutability. But the former doesn’t exist and the latter is highly limited. By contrast, professional pols on the left are afflicted by a malady one might call Panglossism. More specifically, that there is nothing whatever wrong with the U.S. economy apart from the bugaboos of income inequality and intractable privilege, which we might expect to be remedied in the next pogrom against microaggressors. Thus academia is beginning to admit wh...

The progressive complaint against reaction is its impertinence. In presenting yesterday's "outmoded" thinking  as consisting in permanent values, it fails the fashion test, having the temerity not to know it is vanquished, like spats, or collar bars. Ultimately, progressivism is a disordered aesthetic that assigns merit based on three criteria: 1) currency 2) purity of its hatred for unapproved forms, and 3) transgression of traditional canons. In practical terms, it amounts to a celebration -no, an imposition- of ugliness across the spectrum of human activity. If beauty is what succors the human within us, then ugliness is whatever creates a hospitable environment for that which is post-human, or infra-human.

Any word placed in front of the term "justice" as a modifier indicates the perversion of the latter. Special forms of justice seem to always take the form of a material discount. It is not a great mystery, then, that Cultural Marxism in all its forms and disguises has economics at its center. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/20/harvard-law-activists-demand-free-tuition-as-a-mat/

Nature abhors a reproductive vacuum. Where one exists, much that appears to be mere politics arises to fill it. But it may be that instinct (and its perversion) are at work in thought. Perhaps underneath all ideology are necessities only dimly glimpsed. Such may be the case with immigration. But here the law of unintended consequences cannot be suspended as easily as border enforcement. The law of unintended consequences states that the result of any action (thus any public policy) to achieve a given end will be consequences that are unintended. This is something to do with incomplete information, a human absolute. An unintended consequence of feminism is that it's Newtonian--its appearance generates an equal and opposite reaction.  Feminism is in essence anti-reproductive, and nature has a way of destroying what opposes her. Deflation is one of her weapons. If you end or significantly pause immigration, deflation will--eventually--fix the psycho-social pathogen of feminism...

In the Völuspá of the Poetic Edda, Ithavoll is the mythological location of the plain where a remnant of the gods meet following the events of Ragnarök, to begin again the work of city building, the first being Gimli -said to be the most beautiful place in the world: At Ithavoll met the mighty gods; Shrines and temples they timbered high; Forges they set, and they smithied ore, Tongs they wrought, and tools they fashioned. A second time Ithavoll is mentioned, where the past is recalled to those present, perhaps as a warning: The gods in Ithavoll meet together, Of the terrible girdler of earth they talk, And the mighty past they call to mind, And the ancient runes of the Ruler of Gods. Who are "the gods" but us? Homo Europaeus. Those who carry with grace the burden of order and reason for all the world, a charge from God. Ithavoll is the place where we begin again, as in the Palingenesis of Christ, where we regain humanity from the loss of the fall. For the latt...

It will be bitter comedy, but a joke I'll secretly relish, when weepy sentimentalists and immigrants succeed in making Europe and America exactly like the dung heaps they fled. But then perhaps vast empty tracts of Africa will be ready for the plow of reason and order.