One winter afternoon I was relaxing with a half-dozen fellow graduate philosophy students discussing theories of law and punishment. About an hour into the discussion, it occurred to me that some moral laws might limit pleasure and enjoyment in the short term but in the long term minimize suffering and maximize human fulfillment.

A few days ago I finished studying Sex and Culture for the second time. It is a remarkable book summarizing a lifetime of research by Oxford social anthropologist J.D. Unwin.[1] The 600+ page book is, in Unwin’s words, only a “summary” of his research—seven volumes would be required to lay it all out.[2] His writings suggest he was a rationalist, believing that science is our ultimate tool of inquiry (it appears he was not a religious man). As I went through what he found, I was repeatedly reminded of the thought I had as a philosophy student: some moral laws may be designed to minimize human suffering and maximize human flourishing long term.

Unwin examines the data from 86 societies and civilizations to see if there is a relationship between sexual freedom and the flourishing of cultures. What makes the book especially interesting is that we in the West underwent a sexual revolution in the late 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s and are now in a position to test the conclusions he arrived at more than 40 years earlier. //

I have prepared a 26-page collection of quotes from his book that summarize his findings (2), but even that would leave you with a significant under-appreciation of the rigour and fascinating details revealed in data from 86 cultures. Here are a few of his most significant findings: //

Unwin found that when strict prenuptial chastity was abandoned, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking disappeared within three generations of the change in sexual freedom. So how are we doing as we enter the second generation since our own sexual revolution at the end of the 20th century?

As Saagar Enjeti of Breaking Points told The Federalist in 2020, “The highest readership in American history was whenever we had a burgeoning massive partisan news. That’s actually how most people got their news, when we had huge levels of literacy, and we even had huge levels of news consumption, of voter participation.”

“Places like the New York Times and the Washington Post and the mainstream media, which are carrying over their old veil of objectivity … but they have to post crazy critical race theory, because that’s what their upper-middle-class white subscribers want to hear,” Enjeti said. “And that’s fine, it’s okay. Seriously. The part that bothers me is that they then claimed to be the arbiter of truth and the paper of record in the United States.”

Enjeti is the hugely successful host of an independent news show that prizes authenticity over neutrality, understanding that’s almost an impossible standard anyway.

So how can the television network be neutral even if it really tries? This is the same problem that plagued Lemon and Cuomo. They honestly believe bananas are apples. That’s how insulated and ignorant they are. I’d say everyone at CNN should read “Coming Apart” but they won’t because its author has been condemned in the court of wrongthink.

CNN+ is a casualty of the network’s identity crisis, which is in and of itself a casualty of our national identity crisis. But without cynical and incompetent corporations like CNN, who told the country apples were bananas while pretending to do the opposite, we wouldn’t be so deep in the hole anyway.

In our individualist society, both sexes are bombarded with the lie that living for your own pleasure is the most fulfilling thing you can do. //

In a 2018 interview, Ginni Thomas — who has been married to the Supreme Court justice for more than three decades — asked her husband about the best part of being on the bench.

“It’d be impossible without you. It’s sorta like, how do you run with one leg? You can’t. It makes it whole when I have my wife,” was his touching reply. //

Contrary to the deranged voices suggesting this clip is any kind of dunk on the Thomases, Clarence’s praise of Ginni reflects a beautiful truth about marriage. When two people become one, they are both part of something greater than themselves — and living for someone outside of themselves (even more true for parents of children!). Marriage and family are no substitute for finding purpose and meaning in one’s relationship with God, but they are institutions designed to reflect and complement the eternal.

While cultural, political, and career investments can all be gainful, rewarding, and even necessary — and often have meaningful human impacts — investing in another eternal human soul carries infinitely more reward (though they are far from mutually exclusive). This isn’t limited to marriage; it’s the reason parents, teachers, mentors, pastors, friends, doctors, missionaries, counselors, and anyone who serves their fellow man sees so much worth (and finds so much satisfaction) in what they do. It’s the invested time and energy that people on their deathbeds never regret.

For men and women alike, there is a deep dignity conferred by knowing that someone else lovingly looks to you and depends on you. Good men take pride in protecting and providing for their families and pleasing their wives. Good women take pride in similarly serving and loving their families, knowing that they are cherished and that, as Clarence said so adoringly of Ginni, their husbands’ lives would be “impossible” without them.

Joseph Moore
5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
A kick in the pants to those of us who are still drifting along sedated by nostalgia
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2020
Brian Niemeier‘s 90-page book Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You, is a kick in the pants to those of us who are still drifting along sedated by nostalgia, still paying for the privilege of a front-row seat to the mutilation and ultimate destruction of our own culture, willfully oblivious to the contempt and hatred of those who have appointed themselves our betters. I needed that kick – while I have long since revoked access to my wallet to Hollywood movies, and have never been much for games and comics, I still sometimes click on mainstream news articles and shop with major corporations. As explained below, these are now as much of the problem as the direct culture war waged in films and print. Many major corporations do all in their power to prove their hatred for me and mine and everything we believe and love. Don’t give them your money. Don’t give them your clicks.

So if you still are paying to consume blockbusters, comic book movies, video games, mainstream books and comics, or patronizing sports teams, retail outlets and ‘news’ media that have gone way, way out of their way to let you and the entire world know they hate you and everything you love – read this book. Now.

DGMTPWHY provides a quick tour through the who, when, where, what, and why of our current state of all but unwatchable, unreadable and unplayable ‘entertainment. The creators of mainstream entertainment have gotten converged, and, despite the hit to their corporate wallets, are now purveyors of nihilist propaganda masquerading as movies, comics, books, and games.

They must subvert and destroy what we, the sheep they despise, love. Manly men trying to be honorable, heroic and manly, and feminine women trying to be honorable, heroic and feminine, are right out – they are tools of the patriarchy, the cultural hegemony of oppression under which we sheep labor, and from which our purple-haired, nose ringed genderfluid betters are going to save us – or make sure we die from their trying. A character as complex as Rick in Casa Blanca, or even Luke in Star Wars, is to be simplified for the purposes of the cause. If you are so unwoke as to like such complex characters, well, our betters plan to fix that – by stories with no heroes and no villains, which leaves them with no plots or even logic. So things blow up.

And, of course, this all boils down to hatred of God. I’ve long held that all heresies are denials of the Incarnation. The basic ingredients of the dogma are a transcendent yet merciful God, creator of the Universe, Who, in an unfathomable act of humility and love, becomes one of us, suffers for us, and saves us. He defeats evil, and gives us hope. The purveyors of modern culture reject and mock each of these ingredients one by one, specifically. There is no God, nor any evil to defeat, nor good to defend. There can be no heroes, and no villains. Nothing is created from love, which is a lie. Humility is stupid; suffering is pointless. Only power matters, if anything matters.

There is no hope.

Modernism, of which this whole cultural war is the current manifestation, battles to defeat the good, the true, and the beautiful, even in such seemingly trivial forms as comic books and movies. But popular entertainment, from Homer to Shakespeare to Star Wars, is the way a culture is defined, nourished, and passed along. Just because it’s Batman and Thor getting the Social Justice treatment instead of (for the moment) Bach and Dante, doesn’t make it less dangerous Indeed, a lot more people have their morality formed by Superman and Harry Potter than by Milton and Flannery O’Conner. In a sane, healthy society, the popular culture and the highest high culture are formed by, share and communicate the same moral messages. For a century or more, that has not been the case in the West: our high culture is a cesspool of nihilism, while, up until the last 50 years, popular culture was still dominated by the theme of good versus evil – and the now novel idea that it’s better if good wins.

Brian published this work in April, before the rioting and the Antifa/Black Lives Matters psyops took over the ‘news’, and wrote it, I imagine, before the COVID hysteria and lockup. These are of a piece: the same people who show their hatred of you in movies and books have broadened their channels, and now show their murderous intent through the flexes and humiliation rituals of the lockup and masks and ‘social distancing’ (a phrase no one had heard of 4 months ago that is now treated like the Wisdom of the Ages), and by their apologetics, encouragement, and approval of those who would literally burn our country down. They destroy statues as phase one of an effort to memory hole anything that doesn’t conform to their contempt. I exaggerate not one iota when I say: Antifa and BLM dream of getting to kill you and your family. They are driven by the Marxist fantasy that bad people on the Wrong Side of History are all that stand in the way of paradise on earth. That paradise is the glorious End that justifies any means, including the slaughter of all who, in the minds of the Marxists, oppose it. Stalin and Mao, with their purges and Great Leap Forward, are not seen as history’s greatest criminals, but as role models. You and I are those bad people. They want us dead.

Don’t believe me? Read what they have to say for themselves.

The companies that even today are bending the knee and falling all over themselves in their rush to issue statements, not in condemnation of wanton property destruction and threatened and real physical harm up to and including murder, but rather in support of the rioters and vandals. The very idea that there are significant numbers of ‘peaceful protesters’ was always ludicrous: useful idiots and bored, antsy teenager of all ages, sure. Large numbers of people who take to the streets for weeks on end because a fellous thug who once robbed a pregnant woman at gunpoint while she pleaded for her life got himself killed by an out of control cop who is in jail awaiting trial?

That’s not what’s happening.

Back to the book. I know what Brian is talking about. Star Wars came out the summer after my freshman year in college. My girlfriend at the time kept raving about this movie we had to go see, even though she’d seen it several times already. I, a callous sophisticate as only a 19 year old can be, remained cool.

Then we hit the theater – with a line around the block. From the first scene, I was hooked. Awesome, and so much fun! So, of course, went back several times, and saw the sequels also several times each in the theaters, and got the videos as soon as they came out, and did my best to wear them out. So, yea – I get it.

Even after the road kill that was the prequels, with dread in my heart, I went to see the Force Awakens – and was mildly entertained. BUT – never felt the slightest urge to see it again, or get the DVD. Upon reflection, the movie got worse and worse: the pageantry and special effects – and the still-not-bone-dry well of good will earned by the original trilogy – distracted me from the cardboard characters, the utter lack of character development, the stupid, derivative plot, the relentlessly nonsensical motivations (or lack thereof) driving what little story they had. Rather than Luke’s textbook hero’s journey, we get a total Mary Sue; rather than family, honor, and friendship invigorating the characters, we had – what, exactly?

I’ve seen none of the subsequent movies. Since Brian first mentioned his rule – never give money to people who hate you – a few years ago, my inchoate disgust got a name and a focus, and rather than just avoiding movies because I didn’t want to feel used, I began avoiding them on principle – the principle of this book.

Now, we need to expand the field in which this dictum operates to include all corporations and businesses that have kowtowed to BLM and Antifa: No, Corporate America, you do not need to prove you aren’t racist by anything beside treating all your customers with respect, providing good value for the dollar, and hiring and promoting people based solely on how well they do those first two things. Pandering to bullies earns my contempt, not my dollars; actively supporting people who want me and mine dead gets me fired up to look for and promote alternatives to anything you might offer

In her YouTube video, titled “Reading Makes You Hot,” which has more than 3.8 million views, Chamberlain describes how reading alleviates her anxiety and depression. She explains, “Reading is harmless. Going on social media is not harmless. It makes you sad, it makes you compare yourself to other people, it makes you depressed.” //

Millions of teens and young adults can relate to Chamberlain’s experience, and research has found a definite causal relationship between social media and depression. A study conducted by the University of Arkansas found that young adults who spent more than 300 minutes a day on social media platforms were “2.8 times as likely to become depressed within six months” than those who spent 120 minutes or less on social media.

According to Nicholas Carr’s bestselling book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” the exhaustion many users experience after engaging with social media stems from the fact that “our social standing is, in one way or another, always in play, always at risk. The resulting self-consciousness — even, at times, fear — magnifies the intensity of our involvement with the medium. That’s true for everyone, but it’s particularly true for the young.”

Thus, trying to relax through social media is a contradiction of terms. //

Reading, on the other hand, is a rather abnormal activity from an evolutionary standpoint. It requires “an unnatural process of thought, one that demand[s] sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object,” as Carr continues.

Strict mental discipline is needed to “resist the urge to let [one’s] focus skip from one sensory cue to another.” But by detaching from the distractions of the outside world, the reader develops the ability to think and process deeply, to digest and internalize the information being read in a way that no amount of internet research can replace.

Although reading thus poses a relaxing alternative to TikTok or Instagram, the transition process is not without its challenges. When she first began reading for leisure, Chamberlain realized that she “actually had forgotten how to read. I would read a whole page, I’d flip to the next page, and then I’d realize, ‘Oh wait, I absorbed no knowledge or information from that page.’ Then I’d go back and read the page again.”

She is not alone in her struggle. Reading comprehension has been declining in America for years, and lockdowns only exacerbated the situation. But Carr reassures us that rewiring your brain is possible. With enough training, those skills of deep concentration and focus can be relearned, or developed for the first time.

Just make sure to hide your smartphone while you practice.

Jennifer Sey

I turned down $1 million severance in exchange for my voice. //

The red tag on the back pocket of the jeans I handed over to the Russian girls used to be shorthand for what was good and right about this country, and when I think about my trip to Moscow, so many decades ago, I still get a little choked up.

But the corporation doesn’t believe in that now. It’s trapped trying to please the mob—and silencing any dissent within the organization. In this it is like so many other American companies: held hostage by intolerant ideologues who do not believe in genuine inclusion or diversity. //

I’ll always wear my old 501s. But today I’m trading in my job at Levi’s. In return, I get to keep my voice.

Raab, who runs the campaigns for GEICO, agrees that insurance ads need to evolve. “Our competition isn’t just other insurance brands,” he says. “It’s any entertainment brand. To compete, we must be as captivating as Netflix, Marvel, Fortnite and the millions of endlessly inventive content creators on TikTok.”

But Kolt disagrees with this “self-absorbed” approach.

To be successful, he said, advertisers just need to “tell the truth. Advertising on TV works,” he added. “Sometimes even bad advertising.”

Emily Jashinsky @emilyjashinsky
"The current surplus of exposed flesh in the public realm has led to a devaluation of women and, paradoxically, to sexual ennui." -Camille Paglia

adidas @adidas
Replying to @goldilocksrocks
We want to celebrate bodies in all their glory and proudly showcase how different we all are 🙌
4:14 PM · Feb 9, 2022

Excess nudity has erased the beauty in modesty, desensitizing sexual desires of a public to whom the naked body has lost its fascination. There’s a distinct difference between being a prude and acknowledging the pendulum has swung too far.

[Kanye West] knew the fakeness of the reality world and dove in anyway. He knew all he was looking for was an accessory, and Kim Kardashian is a walking Barbie doll, more plastic than biological material these days. He knew it, and that’s what he liked about her. They were going to be a power couple, from fashion to business to family. Ye was building an empire and Kardashian was the perfect Empress.

Things change when you become a parent. The world shifts, and what you thought was most important completely drops out of view. Kanye West, the father, was a lot different than Kanye West, the artist. He had viewed his marriage as a type of art installation, but West seemed to abhor the idea of making a public experiment of his family. He’s been complaining about their presence on social media and television since nearly the beginning.

Sadly for him, it’s far too late for a do-over. As I was thinking about the celebrity drama my daughter was engrossed in on her phone, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad for the entire West family. They are surrounded by chaos and craziness right now, and it’s all because their father got what he wished for.

He never chose a partner, he chose a decoration.

The tough lesson Kanye West is learning is one we can all stand to be reminded of.

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. //

What I am saying is simple- dream big, choose wisely. Make an effort to draw out the potential consequences of your choice to their possible conclusions, and ask yourself if you’re willing to live that way to have what you want in the here and now.

You want a handsome, wealthy man, but are you willing to accept the ego that often comes with? You want a popular, desired wife, but are you willing to accept what kind of mother that wife will be, and who she may make your children into? You want to be the boss, but are you willing to accept that the people you thought were friends may not like you at all once you write their work reviews?

Choose wisely, because the one thing you cannot choose is time. It marches on with or without you and one day you will be looking at a really sad and tragic consequence of your choice and you’ll have to ask yourself, “Was it worth it?”

Decide now, not when regret is at your doorstep.

Here’s How To Fight Pedophilia’s Normalization
Let’s be abundantly clear: this is not a complicated issue. In fact, there can be no simpler issue. Pedophilia is evil. That’s it. We shouldn’t accept the notion that pro-pedophilia sentiments are valid ideas to be contended with in the marketplace of ideas by the use of rhetorical flourish or superior philosophizing.

Illiberalism is no crime when your opponent uses bad-faith arguments to justify moral atrocities that target the most vulnerable among us, victimizing them in ways they can’t even comprehend.

These ideas, just like those who use their institutional positions to normalize this horrid evil, must be ostracized, shamed, shunned, stigmatized, and mocked out of any and all forms of socio-political or academic influence. This is not extreme. It’s the natural immune system response that any healthy society enacts when confronted with a rising tide of danger and evil.

Here are some simple ways you can reject it:

1. Refuse to use euphemistic and manipulated language. //

2. Become comfortable with being intolerant.
   Tolerance is a vice, not a virtue, when you are asked to tolerate unspeakable moral crimes. Our society has begun to see tolerance as the mark of an enlightened person. Reject this faulty framing, and all the degeneracy and spiritual rot that has followed closely behind it.

3. Fight, fight, fight.
   If there was ever a time to be uncompromising, to cling to your beliefs with unrelenting zeal, this is it. The only proper response to situations such as this is action backed by righteous anger. Root out attempts to normalize pedophilia anywhere and everywhere you find it. Publicize it.

“Our culture is a trap and makes women feel terrible about themselves,” she wrote in January 2021. “How our culture defines beauty makes it impossible to keep up with. Women are overly sexualized. I know from the worst kind of experience. … To this day I need to write reminders of why I’m worthy that have nothing to do with my physical appearance to convince myself that I’m enough.” //

But notice that, while Hefner’s turtleneck is certainly modest, it’s still striking and it certainly isn’t ugly. That’s because — as she seems to sense — the opposite of hypersexualization isn’t frumpiness, it’s beauty! //

True beauty has a confidence that doesn’t seek validation in naked sex appeal or in self-congratulatory ugliness. It’s dressed in the clothing equivalent of what Edmund Burke called the “decent drapery of life,” which renders beauty by both revealing and concealing. //

Not only is beauty real, it’s a good, desirable thing. Defined rightly, it’s part of the lovely vocation of womanhood and femininity. It’s something to be curated, not rejected (or injected). And that is empowering.

It’s in that sense that ‘Oh My God’ is biblical, not because Adele illumines a path that is holy or righteous but because she shows us how sin so often works.

What's really striking is how these videos underscore the onslaught of stuff, the acquisition and disposable nature of stuff, and the fact that sometimes just getting a bunch of stuff that's so cheaply made it's not worth trying to resell piece by piece makes these YouTubers feel like they're getting away with something. (I also think that in effect, these people have discovered the dollar store and could get a similar effect by going into a dollar store with their eyes closed and just taking home the first 50 things they ran into.) //

There was a guy who summed this up in one video so perfectly that I wrote down his comment immediately. He had just found, among his "tech" stuff, a package of 100 interoffice mail envelopes. Just ... interoffice mail envelopes, in there with the doggie camera and the filthy earbuds. He didn't need them, didn't want them, knew immediately he would throw them away, but he was still really impressed that he'd gotten such great value. He said: "No use for these, unfortunately, but damn!"

You can’t learn from your experiences if you can’t remember them in some capacity. As a child, you may have burned your hand by touching a hot lightbulb, or ran too fast down a hill and fell hard after you tripped over your own feet. These experiences teach you simple lessons. Don’t touch a hot lightbulb, and pace yourself when moving quickly down a hill.

Human collective experience is just like that. It’s imperative that we remember the mistakes we make in the past in order to avoid making them again.

In fact, one of the most important lessons we’ve learned is about this lesson in particular, and it was best put by George Santayana when he said “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” //

You’ve likely noticed the deletion of various parts of our history, or at the very least, the attempt at completely rewriting it. For instance, the “1619 Project” is an attempt at reimagining the history of the United States with more of a focus on slavery than every other aspect of our story that brought this nation to what it is today. If the people who push this monstrosity were given their way, they would actually achieve the opposite of raising awareness about the evils of slavery and racism.

The founding fathers created their nation in a time when slavery was so embedded into culture that it would have killed it if they had immediately done away with it, but they, being men who truly believed in freedom and opportunity for all, set things in motion that would slowly poison slavery to death and eventually see the nation cast it off. To be sure, it’s a moment that came to fruition under President Abraham Lincoln, who later said that he was finishing what the founders had started.

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/07/02/lincoln-debunked-dems-n245192 //

Perhaps it won’t take well, but future generations will be so far removed from the concept because we’ve taken the lessons out of the picture by completely stripping it from other forms of media.

In other words, we lose the lesson. We have nothing to learn from, and thus no one should be surprised when, at some point in the future, repeating the sin becomes a reality.

That slavery is a sin needs to stay right where it is. Moreover, how we dealt with that sin in the past also needs to stay fully intact.

We as a nation eliminated a great evil and at great cost, and that should never be forgotten. We should never forget why we eliminated it too.

It is a rare instance when I almost entirely agree with anything in the Big Culture-Big Media outlet The Atlantic. But recently they published this….

America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing:

“When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.” //

“The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. The primary cost is that many unlucky and vulnerable people are destroyed.

“American society has (now) accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.” //

So why not gamble your money? It appears to be the only way you can actually accrue wealth. In a country whose institutions are actively destroying your money — and corruptly working with others to steal it.

The only flaw in the article? Its apparent attack on short-term bank loans to poor people.

Marche doesn’t specifically mention the utter corruption of the 2008 housing crisis, but it fits right in with the theme he’s developed.

That crisis was caused by Big Government and Big Banks colluding to steal money out of the home mortgage market by throwing trillions of dollars at poor people everyone knew couldn’t pay it back. //

Ninja loans are another name for NINA which stands for no income, no assets….”

This was Big Banks gambling trillions of dollars — of our money — on nigh guaranteed losers, with Big Government rigging the system — so the Big Banks’ wins were guaranteed, and its losses outsourced to US.

Big Banks paid themselves obscene fees on each awful loan they made. Until it destroyed the home mortgage market — and with it the global economy.

At which point Big Government left US to die — and gave the Big Banks trillions of our dollars. Which the Big Banks immediately used to give themselves huge bonuses as reward for royally screwing US.

The lesson that should have been gleaned from this mess is: If poor people with bad credit want to borrow money, the loan terms should reflect the risk posed.

Which this article bizarrely criticizes:

“…(C)redit lines with 23 percent APR….”

These are actually short-term loan rates. If you’re poor and out of money on Tuesday — they’ll loan you money until payday Friday.

It’s a credit line for poor people. Unlike the idiotic housing crisis loans – these have an interest rate that accurately reflects the risk of lending to poor people. It’s the marketplace — accurately reflecting the marketplace.

These loans — and the people who take them — have NOTHING AT ALL to do with our society’s descent into a gambling ethos culture.

These people aren’t borrowing this money to bet the ponies. They are borrowing it to fix their car so they can keep getting to work.

These loans are lifelines for the people who take them. And they are often the only lifelines they are offered. //

jeffs
an hour ago
Americans’ greater acceptance of — and penchant for
Fill in the blank with any moral degradation from divorce to abortion to shacking up to slothfulness to the alphabet soup agenda, et. al.

Breitbart was correct but forgot culture is downstream of faith and religion; the Christian faith. Churches, pastors, denominations are ultimately to blame for our current judgment. God has handed us over to our vices which will consume us.

This is why there is no political answer to the problems plaguing our Nation.

We should be able to look back at these things in the forms that they are, remember the lessons they had to impart (if they had one), and move forward with new creations and ideas. This nostalgia trip we’re on as a society is just an attempt at reawakening the dead, but it is dead and we need to let it rest. We’re doing it, and us, a disservice by trying to bring them back and make them work in a time they weren’t meant for.

What I’m really trying to say is that I’m super mad at Netflix for making a live-action Cowboy Beebop.

00:03
I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the danger of the single story." I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children's books.

After decades of tearing down manners and norms, self-proclaimed social progressives are now frantically trying to reconstitute some sense of public decency. //

Goldberg and those like her are rediscovering the truth that “anything goes” is unworkable, and that society will therefore always have manners, norms, and taboos. These are, of course, imperfect, as are their supporters. But in considering manners and mores, social conservatives have the benefit of drawing on the experience and wisdom of ages, whereas today’s taboo-builders are working from scratch.

No wonder they are often in a moral panic. Having destroyed traditional restraints on the darkness within human nature, they are scrambling to build new norms out of corporate media think pieces and the Twitter mob.

Faced with the failure of the sexual culture she has championed, Goldberg therefore has nothing better to offer than suggesting that cruelty should be taboo, as if moral philosophers and teachers had previously overlooked the point. But though moral reminders and instruction are perpetual necessities, there are few new moral discoveries to be made, except by those who presume there was nothing worthwhile before themselves.

This highlights the real problem with Goldberg’s reluctance to acknowledge the perspicacity of social conservatives. Spiteful refusal to give credit where it is due is trivial in itself, but significant insofar as it cuts her off from those who might offer solutions to the problems she has belatedly noticed. This ideological self-bubbling may be comforting — and keep her from being challenged on other issues as well — but it is why we often see progressives rediscovering truths that social conservatives never stopped declaring.

For instance, it took decades of bitter experience and a multitude of studies for many self-proclaimed social progressives to admit that divorce is bad for kids, and fatherlessness is really bad for kids. Likewise, after decades of tearing down manners and norms, they are now frantically trying to reconstitute some sense of public decency — left-wing activists are now troubled by many of the same vulgar lyrics that once perturbed the Moral Majority.

Societies require norms and manners regulating everything from sex to speech. Conservatives understand this, which enables social conservatism to be more than a mere defense of the status quo. We know that the permanent things of human nature are foundational to human society and flourishing. Among the most important of these permanencies is that men and women are different but complementary, and that their coming together provides for the continuation of humanity. //

We recognize that culture is largely organic and that humans are fallible and finite. This is why conservatives prefer reform to revolution. We know the fragility of even a tolerably good order, and that tearing a culture down is much easier than rebuilding one.

This is evident in the mess of Goldberg and her comrades attempting to develop new taboos. They are incoherent about what should be prohibited, and the punishments they dole out are disproportionate and capricious. Also, with their previous vision of human flourishing having ended in disaster, they have no idea what they even trying to build.

Instead of taking advice for those frantically trying to undo the damage their ideas have inflicted, we should listen to the social conservatives who saw it coming, and who have preserved ways of family and community life that promote genuine well-being.

The solution isn't so much hyper-focusing on better self-image as it is not obsessing over self-image at all. //

Self-confidence isn’t a bad thing, but our carefully tended online shrines to our own attractiveness often morph into something else. Even as young people are feeling insufficient while scrolling through others’ curated feeds, they’re usually pouring effort into presenting an appealing and enviable image of themselves. If they aren’t self-critical of that image, they’re likely proud of it.

Aristotle suggested virtue is the point of moderation between two extremes, and that principle holds true in the self-image department. If self-hatred is the vice at one end of the spectrum, self-worship is not the virtue in the middle but the vice at the other end.

Social media doesn’t just make us self-conscious, it often makes us narcissists. While the concerns about its link to depression and suicide should be treated with urgency and compassion, the fact that our society can’t handle seeing put-together snapshots of other peoples’ lives without feeling down about our own is generally further proof of our self-obsession. //

Social media undoubtedly has damaging effects on young users’ self-esteem, but the solution isn’t so much hyper-focusing on self-image as it is not obsessing over self-image at all.

Our culture’s inability to respond to the pitfalls of social media reflects our deeper misunderstanding of what a healthy handle on self-worth looks like. We see it in the madcap frenzy to affirm young people’s self-declared gender identities, body image, and the vaguely-defined category of “lived experiences” as integral factors in the value of a human soul.

Once we start using external metrics to boost our worth, they can just as easily decimate it. If a young woman is self-conscious about her weight, telling her that her extra curves are what makes her valuable is still buying into the idea that a woman’s worth is determined by her dress size.

Too often, we make the same haphazard overcorrection about the effects of social media on kids. If Instagram makes young people self-conscious and self-critical, the reasoning goes, we simply need to shelter their self-esteem. As a result, we see Band-Aid fixes like Instagram removing users’ ability to see likes on other people’s posts (although the app has since backtracked this change). ///

Who you are in Christ is the antidote and fix to self-obsession and other-envy.

The late Andrew Breitbart accurately noted that politics is downstream from culture, something the Democrats have been aware of and used to full advantage since John F. Kennedy. The left now has a near monopoly on pop culture, i.e. the entertainment media, even in areas so ostensibly conservative as country music. While TikTok stars and social media influencers theoretically herald a new wave of personal brand popularity personas, the media puppet string pullers are still running things, threatening to either cut or strangle with said strings anyone who fails to dance to their chosen tune. //

This is the media‘s game. It feeds the delusion and illusion that an individual matters, when in fact it practices the exact opposite, laughing up its sleeve at those desperately clawing for their 15 minutes. The media could care less about who’s on TikTok, or who’s on the pop charts. It only cares about that which glorifies itself and feeds the lie that it not only matters, but also cares. No, no it does not. It prays for another flawed celebrity upon which to prey. //

This passive/aggressive cancel culture is a pernicious perversion. It is the National Enquirer and TMZ on steroids. These at least make no pretense of their mission. They are gossip sites and nothing more. The pop culture vultures seek to actively destroy for the apparent pleasure of doing so.

So where does this leave us?

A guideline was provided long ago:

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ... //

are losing the culture war not only because we have abandoned the battlefield, but because we refuse to demonstrate basic human kindness and courtesy to those placed on pop culture pedestals and then attacked, as is currently the case with Billie Eilish, for being there. Let’s turn it around. We can provide genuine artistic options, and we can personally promote these alternatives by not withdrawing from the world, but rather smilingly refusing to sit down and shut up. Should we be in places where there is direct access to the genuinely influential, we can present an alternative to those who seek to leech on to their fame by caring about, and for, them as people. Never underestimate the power of simple respect. //

that are the exact opposite of hiding in our bunkers and railing against these people. Instead, when the media cretins pounce and demand their pound of flesh let’s support those who have the opportunity to, and will seize upon it, the ability to directly say to the attacked, “I will show you the most excellent way.”