Good morning, digital neighbors! Happy Monday, ADD Irregulars, Coffee Talkers, Curmudgeons, and WSN Curators! Hello again, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants, Seekers, and Lurkers at the Report—and finally, all of the Politically Homeless, Misfits, Dawn Patrollers, & Phamily at Phetasy. Happy Monday to all. This is a TL;DR type of post, and it is not a sugar-coated one.
After a week of some posts about friendship, how about some thoughts on community?
While we are all parts of various communities, they tend to be a catch-22: We come into contact with more neighbors, and it comes with tremendous benefits and, at times, terrible consequences. So much of what is normal in our lives is because we are members of communities that have built all the amenities that we take for granted until they are suddenly no longer present. All the great works of art, technology, leisure, and what we once called culture are because of community. All of this has happened because more of us have learned how to cooperate, how to work for a common and perceived good. There was a sense that the self was not the most important thing in the world. The self is important, but the self is part of something greater—how much greater is up for debate.
It is impossible to have community with others who believe what is opposed or contrary to what you perceive as good or worthy of pursuit. The West is at a crossroads on a suspension bridge that is frayed between the tension of what we once called traditional life of the last few hundred years and the spirit of division and resentment that is at the heart of the Left’s war on tradition. The cultural Hegelians can only see the world in terms of oppressors and victims; they have never wanted equality, equity, or any semblance of a fair playing field. They want the people they have resented for the past century to suffer, to feel fear, to be oppressed as fitting penance for the past.
The Left has exploited common understanding of the imperfections of the past and, under the guise of greater liberty, “fairness,” and ending oppression, duped many in the Middle and even on the Right into cooperation. We would be wise to pay attention to what the Left hates: God, family, fatherhood, motherhood, children, liberty, freedom of thought, individualism, personal prosperity (which they will tell you you possess because of systems of exploitation or your personal exploitation). The list goes on, but that is why I despise the Cabal. The Cabal is opposed to all the above and more. The Cabal wants you to be a submissive serf who does their job, admires their betters, and is content with whatever comforts they choose to afford you. You merit nothing; the Cabal will choose what is fitting for you. Be prepared to be disposed of—disposing of people is what the Left does best. They celebrate death. Sorry it is so dark, but you can’t always package the truth in a pleasing package.
The Cabal consists of the Enemedia (you don’t hate them enough), Academia (where learning goes to die and cultic thinking thrives), Wokertainment (more cultural preaching than you get on a Sunday morning), Political Careerists (who truly think they are the best of us and the most entitled), Big Pharma (just here for the money, folks—take your medicine and shut up), and Big Tech (championing mind rot and soul poisoning since 2004)—and smaller agents of cultural decline. There are some exceptions in Big Tech like X, Rumble, and the like, but they are few. Anything that comes from the Cabal I inherently view with suspicion. They don’t want to help me, especially as a male of European heritage. I know they blame me. I know they hate me and view me with either resentment or contempt. They have made that clear for the past 50 years; they finally got free of their academic confinement in the last 25 or 30 years. That is a mistake we will rue for a long while. Academia has poisoned every receptive mind that foolishly entertained or embraced its ideas without question or criticism.
Well, if you read any or all of that, thank you. It went on much longer than anticipated when I first sat down to type. Something more lighthearted tomorrow. Community is a great thing, but it is not a free ride. Preserving and reforming communities is essential to their well-being, but the bigger they are, the more likely corruption can spread unchecked and unopposed.
I have three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship and three for society. - Henry David Thoreau
Any society that takes away from those most capable and gives to the least will perish. - Abraham Lincoln
Jackson Wyoming barn - Chase Yaws - Pexels
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
