One of the experiences I’ve had tolerably often, over the more than nineteen years that I’ve been writing these weekly essays, is the discovery that a series of apparently disconnected posts I’ve written were all talking about the same thing. Yes, that’s happened again. It’s going to take some work to trace out the connection I have in mind this time, and unpack its implications; I also have no doubt that some readers are going to be upset or outraged by what follows—though of course that’s nothing new. Climb in and buckle up; it’s going to be a wild ride.
Regular readers may recall quite a few posts, scattered across the last couple of years, in which I talked about the disastrous mismatch between common assumptions embraced by the managerial elite in Western industrial societies and the hard facts that confront them, and us, on every side. I’ve noted the way that rhetoric about “invasive species” has blinded decisionmakers to normal ecological changes that are actually helping, not hurting, the biosphere; I’ve discussed the weird way that imagery lifted from pop culture has made it impossible for too many political leaders to deal with the realities of international conflict, and the fact that a certain very famous fantasy trilogy has turned into a widely used template for thinking, with disastrous results.
All this while, especially but not only in the fifth-Wednesday posts for which my readers get to nominate and vote for subjects, I’ve also written about the tangled and toxic mess that relations between men and women in our society has turned into during the last few decades. The most recent helping of that was in a post about the invention of the concept of matriarchy late last month; one reader noted toward the end of the comment stack that she didn’t remember ever seeing so much raw pain on display, by men and women alike, in my comment pages.
That post was followed by an essay inspired by a weird 1970s science fiction movie—not an obvious segué, I freely grant, but one that ended up unexpectedly giving me the last thing I needed to make sense of it all. Did you ever see the science-class trick where the teacher dissolves a lot of salt in hot water, waits until it cools a little, then drops a single crystal of salt into the solution? If the teacher times it right, that crystal triggers a process that turns the whole beaker into a mass of wet salt crystals. Of all the things that might have caused this particular solution to crystallize—well, all I can say is that I didn’t expect that to be done by a flying stone head that preaches zero population growth, but that’s what happened.
The movie Zardoz, you see, is a parable about the power of stories. It’s when Zed finds out that the flying head he’s worshipped is a metaphor borrowed from an old story that he can replace that story with another, and change his world. The lesson is straightforward enough: stories have immense power, and the stories you don’t recognize as stories can still dominate your life.
Back in the first few years of my blogging career, I used to rile up the more scientifically minded members of the peak oil community by commenting on the importance of myths in modern thinking. Every time I did that, I’d field outraged comments from people insisting at the top of their lungs that they didn’t believe in myths—no, they believed only in facts! Of course they were wrong, and most of the time it wasn’t hard to demonstrate this to everyone’s satisfaction but their own, but that attitude remains welded into place in a great many minds these days.
It might help a little if we set aside the fine old word “myth” and replace it with “narrative,” which means the same thing but doesn’t have the same invective piled atop it. Narratives, then, are the tools by which we understand the world; we think with stories as inevitably as we walk with feet and eat with mouths. Philosophers and psychologists showed long ago that the universe doesn’t present itself to us as a coherent whole—we encounter it as a “buzzing, blooming confusion,” as William James called it, a jumble of sensory inputs that we have to assemble bit by bit into patterns that make sense to us. Human cultures provide the instruction manual for making a world out of the jumble, and at the heart of every culture is a collection of stories.
That’s why children are such omnivorous consumers of anything even remotely like a story, and why so many of them like to hear the same story over, and over, and over again. By being born, they’ve been flung into a whirlwind of unfamiliar experiences they have to learn to cope with, and stories are the tools they use to accomplish that Herculean task. Most of their play consists of inventing and acting out stories. Most of their thinking follows narrative patterns, and this sort of thinking remains in place straight through life, though it can be overlaid with other ways of thinking through education. We’re the storytelling apes, and nearly everything we’ve done since the bonobos kicked us out of the forest and told us to go play on the savannah connects in one way or another to our inveterate fondness for storytelling.
Most of the downsides to that habit have an interesting detail in common. Traditional societies always have a very broad array of stories with sharply different plots and outcomes. If you had the good fortune to grow up reading or, better still, being told old-fashioned fairy tales, you know this already. In some fairy tales—Puss in Boots comes to mind—fortune favors the bold and brash. In others—Cinderella is a good example—it’s the quiet, patient one who wins. No matter what kind of situation you’re in, there are stories that echo it, and also stories that contradict it. You can usually count on finding a story that offers good advice, but you have to pay attention to circumstances and choose the right story.
I suspect we’ve all run into this same effect in our own lives. We approach some situation with a narrative firmly in mind about how we expect it to go, how we want it to go, or how we fear it will go. Then we end up blindsided because things go some completely different way. If we’re nimble enough, we figure out what the new narrative is and jump to it without too much flailing. If we’re not—and I suspect we can all think back to times when we weren’t nimble enough—we blunder around aimlessly, lost in a fog of our own making, because the narrative we’ve imposed on the situation prevents us from seeing what’s actually going on.
Long ago, on a blog platform far, far away—it was literally in the first weeks of my blogging career—I posted an essay on this theme entitled “Knowing Only One Story.” The point at the heart of that essay is that if you use stories to make sense of the world, as our species inevitably does, you’d better know plenty of them, because no one story provides an adequate explanation of the cosmos. As I pointed out, if you only have one story, and insist on applying it to the world no matter what, you can count on two consequences. The first is failure; the second is blind, unthinking rage, as you scream at the cosmos for not behaving the way your one and only story insists it should.
That point comes forcefully to mind as I consider the utter mess that relationships between men and women have become in recent decades—a theme, as I noted above, that’s been central to a good many essays here. It so happens that both sexes have ended up fixated on dysfunctional stories about love, sex, and relationships. They’re different stories from different sources, but the surface diversity of those sources covers an underlying uniformity of plot, and the failure and rage I mentioned in that earlier post are certainly on display.
It so happens that there’s been plenty of discussion in recent years of the male half of the problem, and with good reason. The dysfunctional narratives that men have been fed about sex, love, and relationships, while they appear in many settings, are most clearly seen in pornography. There the actors and actresses—and especially the actresses—behave in ways that simply don’t happen in the real world, writhing in simulated ecstasy in response to things that never get that reaction in any less fake and tawdry context. These days a great many young men grow up watching pornography, and so it’s no surprise that so many of them are such inept lovers, with no clue how to please an actual woman in bed.
Yet there’s an exact equivalent to this on the other side of the gender line, which has not received anything like so much discussion. Women also have dysfunctional attitudes toward sex, love, and relationships, and get fed those attitudes by an equally corrupt and commercial industry, which targets their vulnerabilities as ruthlessly as the porn industry targets men. The vulnerabilities in question are emotional rather than sexual, but the results are comparable. Like the habits of thought enshrined in pornography, they appear in many settings, but if you want to see them in full spate, you can do it best by having a look at today’s fashionable romance fiction.
It so happens that I have a little more background in this than most men. My late wife was a passionate fan of Jane Austen’s novels, and also of those later writers who were inspired by Austen’s example, above all Georgette Heyer, the author who invented the 20th century Regency romance. She also read some 21st century romance fiction, and despised it. Since long conversations on odd topics were one of the strengths of our marriage, we talked about romance fiction quite a bit. As a result, I read and enjoyed several of Heyer’s novels as well as all of Austen’s, and took the time to delve into some recent romance fiction as well.
It’s quite an eye-opening experience, and I recommend it to men who want to understand why so many women are so lousy at relationships these days. Austen and Heyer liked to include quite a variety of male leads in their stories, and by no means all of them fit the standard stereotypes of masculine desirability. In most of today’s romance fiction, by contrast, the male lead is a big, buff bad boy, well over six feet tall, preposterously muscled, dominant and fierce, oozing testosterone from every pore, and built like a horse in the relevant region. That is to say, he’s as absurdly unrealistic as the silicone-enhanced bimbos who play comparable roles in pornography.
Yet it’s the behavior of these overstuffed Ken dolls that deserves closest attention. There are not many plots in current romance fiction, and all of them go out of their way to falsify the realities of interaction between men and women. Perhaps the most common is the one where an ordinary middle-class woman meets some member of the species of inflatable pseudomasculinity just described. After the usual teasing preliminaries are out of they way, they have sex, and the male lead then sheds all his objectionable qualities and proceeds to make this very ordinary woman the center of his world, constantly catering to her emotional needs and wants while expecting nothing from her but what she happens to want to give him.
(This is a very old plot, by the way. It appears in the very first romance novel in English, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, and was overused generation by generation thereafter by authors who knew they could find a market for what we may as well call emotional pornography. Its absence from the novels of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer is no accident; they were wearily familiar with that sort of cheap manipulative trash and went out of their way to write something more interesting, and even to satirize the narrative just described. But of course tripe springs eternal, and there are always people willing to make a fast buck by pushing the predictable buttons in the hope of getting the predictable response.)
The results of saturation with such narratives are as predictable as they are pathetic. Just as a great many men, since they take their ideas about sex from the constellation of narratives most clearly displayed in pornography, have no idea how to please a woman in bed, a great many women, since they take their ideas about love from the constellation of narratives most clearly displayed in romance fiction, have no idea how to please a man out of bed, and quite often have no notion that they should try. They think men ought to look and behave like romance-novel heroes, and end up miserable and lonely when those who do resemble that pattern use them as disposable sex toys and walk away. Meanwhile they spurn and ridicule men who don’t look like romance-novel heroes, and then complain bitterly because those same men don’t want to date them.
We could pursue this line of discussion a good deal further, but I think I’ve probably inspired enough screaming meltdowns on this theme for the moment. Mind you, I have no objection to screaming meltdowns, as they’re a reliable indicator that something genuinely useful has been said—it’s when you start taking flak, as the saying goes, that you know that you’re over the target. With that in mind, let’s take the theme of fixation on a single dysfunctional narrative in a different direction, and talk about the accelerating decline and fall of the Democratic Party.
Those of my readers outside the United States may not have any idea how rapidly that decline and fall is unfolding; those who are in the United States and get their information from what remains of the hyperpartisan legacy media—well, I don’t even have to fill in the blanks, do I? The point at issue is that popular support for the Democratic Party has fallen to historically low levels and is still dropping. Very few Americans genuinely support the policy positions being pushed by Democratic politicians these days.
That’s the crucial subtext to the revolution currently under way in American politics. It’s not all about Donald Trump, however enthusiastically retailers of a specific canned narrative try to define the situation in those hackneyed terms. Trump himself is about what you’d expect from a former reality TV star who found a new performance venue in the political sphere. Two factors unrelated to him give him his considerable power over the American collective consciousness. One is quite simply that he’s giving the American people things that a large majority of them want very badly: an end to unrestricted illegal immigration, an end to endlessly metastasizing bureaucratic overreach, and most recently, an end to policies that go out of their way to encourage street crime and homelessness in the largest American cities.
Yet this wouldn’t be enough to empower him without the other factor, which is the narrative that Democratic politicians and their sock puppets in the media use to interpret today’s politics. That narrative, as I’ve discussed before, insists that the sole source of all the world’s problems is that a Bad Person wants to change things. Whether you call the Bad Person Sauron or Voldemort or Palpatine or Donald Trump, it’s always the same narrative, as rigidly clichéd as the plot of a porn flick or a bodice-busting romance novel. It leads the people who believe it into the self-defeating notion that all they have to do is get rid of the Bad Person and nothing else has to change.
What the Democrats are refusing to deal with is that a substantial majority of Americans are bitterly unhappy with the results of what, until Trump’s rise, was a bipartisan policy consensus in American public life. They’re not flocking to Trump for no reason at all. They’re flocking to him because he’s the only figure in the political scene offering them an alternative to a state of affairs they find intolerable. Democrats who say, “Yes, I know people are unhappy, but…but…Trump!” are missing the point; it’s not as though they’ve offered any other option to the millions who have been harmed and impoverished by the policies they prefer.
Thus the narrative the Democrats are using guarantees that they will do nothing to address the problems that made the rise of someone like Donald Trump inevitable, and will most likely lead to the rise of someone even worse if they find some way to drag Trump down. The unintended message of their narrative, after all, is that anyone who’s dissatisfied with the existing order of society ought to rally around the Bad Person, because that’s the only way change will happen. This is how authoritarian regimes take power: democracies collapse when, due to the usual mechanisms of oligarchic capture, they stop even trying to solve society’s problems, and finally people turn in desperation to somebody who will take power, clear away the obstacles, and actually fix things.
Behind the narrative of Fighting the Bad Person, in turn, is a broader narrative perhaps best summed up by all that doubly dishonest rhetoric about “speaking truth to power.” That rhetoric is dishonest in one way because it claims that one’s own side has exclusive possession of the truth. It’s dishonest in another way because it claims that the other side has exclusive possession of the power. You can see the hypocrisy here in high relief in the antics of millionaire socialist Bernie Sanders, who’s been flying across the country in an expensive private jet claiming to fight the oligarchy, when what he’s actually doing is trying to rally support for one set of oligarchs in their losing struggle with another faction of oligarchs.
We’re long past the point where it makes any sense at all to pretend that all the power in society, or even a preponderance of it, is concentrated in the hands of any one person, party, or class. The logic of intersectionality—the recognition that power and prejudice in society act along many competing lines of division, never just one—needs to be applied to the entire field of political economy. Once this is done, it becomes instantly clear that the bureaucratic class that forms the backbone of the waning Democratic ascendancy has a great deal of power that it’s trying to protect, the entrepreneurial class that has recently seized control of the Republican party also has a great deal of power and is trying to increase this at the bureaucrats’ expense, and many other groups in society—some of them notionally “disadvantaged”—also have considerable power, which they are also trying to defend and increase in the usual way.
There’s a body of thought that can make it easier to see through the rhetorical haze and grasp what’s going on in this complex intersection of warring political factions. Regular readers of mine doubtless won’t be surprised that it’s fairly obscure, though it’s received a little attention in odd corners of the internet now and then. Its name is Situationism; it was the product of a small group of thinkers on the uttermost fringes of mid-20th century European radical politics; like most of the products of those fringes, it staggered under a heavy burden of unhelpful Marxist ideology, from which it never really escaped; and its most useful publications had more to say about urban design than about politics. Except for fifteen minutes of modest fame during the French student riots of 1968, it had next to no influence on events.
That doesn’t sound very promising, doesn’t it? Nonetheless some of the ideas pioneered by the Situationists have enormous relevance to the final crisis of the bureaucratic state now unfolding around us, and to the broader landscape of dissolution and decline that faces industrial society as a whole. To explore that relevance, we’ll have to apply the Situationist tactic of détournement—basically, hijacking an existing set of imagery and ideas, and reworking it to undercut the manufactured Spectacle of which it is a part—to Situationism itself. We’ll begin that project in two weeks.
At this page is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 8/11). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Hippie Viking’s wife and soon-to-be-born baby experience a smooth, low-stress birth that brings their family together.
May DJ’s newborn granddaughter Marishka and daughter Taylor be blessed, healed, and protected from danger, and may their situation work out in the best way possible for both of them.
May
J Guadalupe Villarruel Zúñiga, father of CRPatiño’s friend Jair, who suffers from terminal kidney and liver damage, respond favorably to treatment and be cared for at home. May he also remain in as good health as possible, beat doctors’ prognosis, and enjoy with his wife and children plenty of love, good times and a future full of blessings.
May 12 year old Sebastian Greco of Rhode Island, who recently suffered a head injury, make a prompt and complete recovery with no lasting problems.
May MindWinds’ father Clem be healed of his spinal, blood and cardio infections and returned to good health and wholeness; and may he and his family keep up a robust sense of humor and joy in each others’ continued company.
May Marko’s newborn son Noah, who has been in the hospital for a cold, and Noah’s mother Viktoria, who is recovering from her c-section, both be blessed with good health, strength, endurance, and protection, and may they swiftly they make a full recovery.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis‘s fistula heal, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Jack H.’s father John continue to heal from his ailments, including alcohol dependency and breathing difficulties, as much as Providence allows, to be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Audrey’s friend’s daughter Katie, who died in a tragic accident June 2nd, orphaning her two children, be blessed and aided in her soul’s onward journey; and may her family be comforted.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Pierre and Julie conceive a healthy baby together. May the conception, pregnancy, birth, and recovery all be healthy and smooth for baby and for Julie.
May SLClaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is undergoing dialysis for kidney disease, be blessed, and may her kidneys be restored to full functioning.
May 1Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties; may she quickly be able to resume a normal life, and the cancer not return.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey. And may Kallianeira be soothed and strengthened to successfully cope in the face of this sudden loss.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer.
(Healing work is also welcome. Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe)
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Thank you for featuring the novel, Cotillion, my favorite of all Heyer’s Regency romances.
Nice post.
I mentioned before how I loved your old post from 2015 distaining how Sanders simply awakened the same messianic fantasies as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during their first presidential runs. If I were an American (I am Canadian), I could see myself voting for Sanders as a protest vote absolutely against Hillary’s coronation (kind of like Eugene McCarthy in 1968) but certainly not as a messiah!
I would love to see how many liberals/leftists would react had Sanders been elected in 2016 and 2020 and simply made the same “compromises” in power as his predecessors. Would their have been mass protests, riots, etc? Maybe a breakdown of the two-party system.
I’m up for a discussion about the situationist’s ideas on how to highjack existing imagery and ideas to undercut a dysfunctional narrative. That sounds both relevant and useful.
Just to give another example of how people, even adult and highly educated people, usually default to thinking in stories. When I sat down with my thesis advisor and colleagues to plan my first scientific publication, my advisor, a scientist I highly respect, started by literally drawing a story line consisting of sketched figures with pen on paper. What does the story begin with, how does it continue in a compelling fashion, and how do we want it to end? We had all the data and most of the analyses we need, but they could have been selected and ordered in many different ways.
I see no reason to dispute his opinion that scientists will mostly read and cite papers that tell a clear story. It’s not the ideal way to transmit unbiased knowledge, but it is the way it is.
Hi JMG,
A very good article. I look forward to your post about Situationism, as I’ve never heard of it before.
To extend your analogy… I’m looking over in your direction. My, but the flak intensity where you are is extremely heavy this week. . Could your post possibly have caused some issues? 😉
I think one fairly interesting way to see the hold that narratives have on people is watching the reactions to the Air Canada strike we had here in Canada. It’s not over yet (I’ve seen a lot of tentative deals go up in flames; so it’s entirely possible the strike will resume soon enough). What matters though is that this story no longer matches any of the standard narratives I’ve seen. A lot of other people tried to declare this as Carney’s “Reagan Moment”, a reference to the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981. They were blindsided when Air Canada settled, because that was not part of their narrative: in their narrative, the government had all the power.
I think Air Canada’s actions make sense if they thought they were in a different story: the story of how they held all the power and could crush the union. In the story they seemed to be following, they had already won by ensuring the head of the CIRB (Canada Industrial Relations Board) was in their corner: she spent seven years as their chief council and worked at law firms representing them for many more. Since they could ensure that any legal questions would be resolved in their favour and that the government would be on their side, they could ensure that the union could not legally win this fight. They were right: less than a day after the strike began the union was ordered back to work, but here the story fell apart. It looks like the idea the union would say “frack the law!” caught them by surprise, and their sudden pivot seems to me to be that of people who suddenly realized they had a lot more to lose than they had thought.
Meanwhile, the broader labour movement seemed to have embraced a story about how this was an opening move by the Carney government to break the backs of organized labour, and so started gearing up to fight, and fight hard. It’s looking to me like a lot of them were blindsided by the way this strike looks like it ended without resolving any of the systemic issues: Air Canada and the union hammered out a deal should not have been possible in this story: the story about how the government and large companies were coordinating and prepared to fight hard to break them.
I have no idea how this will play out, because of two wild cards I see: the first is that the tentative deal could fall apart, and the second is that depending on how vindictive the Carney government feels like being, it has enough to send the leaders of the union to jail: they blatantly and publicly broke the law. I’ve seen at least one talking head suggest the government ought to do just that.
In other words, it’s still far too early to tell what story we’re in here. It might be the story of a large company that got arrogant and got brought to heel by organized labour; it might be the start of the story of a much larger political crisis; or it might evolve into a completely different story entirely.
John Michael Greer, do you have any advice for young people in the US surviving in a declining economy or possibly moving somewhere else to avoid it?
JMG,
To my knowledge women’s frequent access to romance novels significantly predated the current collapse in relations between men and women. Could the Romance novel narrative require the influence of 2nd wave feminism as a catalyst to really kick off the current situation? Or was there something else that acted as a catalyst ( from the women’s side of the issue).
“Situationism”? Never heard of it.
That’s not surprising though – I have never been all that impressed with French philosophy, from Rousseau forwards (yes, I know, Rousseau was Swiss). Lacan, Foucault and Derrida leave me stone cold, while Sartre and Camus smell of psychopathology. Overall, modern French philosophy strikes me as intellectually self-referential and onanistic.
It will be interesting to see what you make of Situationism. Perhaps there is more “there” there than I thought.
Great post, JMG!
Situationism is new to me, and I look forward to seeing what useful grains you are able to glean from a field that seems at first blush to be mostly chaff.
I’ve frequently seen misapplied stories cause problems in the lives of people close to me. For instance, I know of a woman who is unable to rebuild any sort of relationship with her estranged adult son because she expects a big daytime-TV-style apology before she can move forward, while from a disinterested third party perspective it is neither warranted nor likely to happen.
As for the current U.S. political system, I’ve been unimpressed with the entrepreneurial class’s attempts to solve domestic problems, though they do have an advantage in that they at least acknowledge that the problems exist and are interested in at least appearing to attempt to solve the problems. If they remain in undisputed power, it’s only a matter of time before a future entrepreneurial techbro makes a tremendously foolish foreign policy blunder because AI suggested it. If it hasn’t happened already.
The current democrat party leadership still has their heads plunged deeply in some dark and moist places. Our government structure still tends towards two parties, so I’m curious in seeing what manner of creature takes shape from the inchoate bones of last decade’s Democrat party. It’s strange because I remember the internal power struggles on the right wing ~2009-2015, with a cacophony of competing ideologues trying to determine the best way forward, while this time on the left it seems to be either old guard mono-mind consensus believers or a buzzing radio silence.
David Ritz @ #3, I did vote for Sanders in 2016 as a protest vote, just as you say. I regarded Mme. Clinton as actively dangerous, in the way a poisonous snake in your house is actively dangerous. That was a notion some us had, that we ought at least prevent her from being able to claim a landslide. I think the most prominent person to articulate that notion may have the late, and much lamented, African American public intellectual Glen Ford.
It is widely, and I think, correctly believed that Sanders as the Democratic nominee would have won against Trump. His presidency would likely have been one term. In domestic policy, I think he might have done rather well, appointing competent and qualified people to important positions and doing what he could to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest Americans. Foreign policy has never been Sander’s strength; there I think he might not have distinguished himself. I was, and remain, of the opinion that what his two presidential campaigns lacked was a strong anti-war, anti-intervention message. Had he had such a message, I think it is at least arguable that he might even have been able to overcome Democratic establishment dirty tricks.
BTW, speaking of private jets, Evangelical mega-church preachers also own and use them.
Excellent! I’m very much looking forward to seeing the coming posts in this series. And I loved your post, “Knowing Only One Story,” when I first found it in late 2006.
This all correlates very neatly with male erotic fantasies of formal power and female erotic fantasies of informal power, each kind of power to be exercised over people of the opposite sex.
Terry Pratchett seriously maintained that stories exist in their own right, outside the material world and quite independently of any actual humans who might hear or tell them. See his academic lecture, “imaginary Worlds, Real Stories” (1999), available for download on archive.org. (archive.org/details/pratchett-2000-briggs-lecture),
I am strongly inclined to agree with Pratchett, and maybe to take it a little farther than he did in his lecture. Stories are an aspect of sentience, and sentience (IMHO) existed even before the creation of matter and energy, time and space.
This post comes along at a fortuitous time for yours truly. Thank you for writing, John Michael. The ideas expressed here are helping me tease out my thinking about the predicament, and while my time is waning here, I do care about the world that will be left in my absence. So much to digest here.
Are the stories always the same because the struggle and will to survive is the same? Will the stories change to reflect the underlying reality of the predicament?
I personally think that a lot of the “issues” that occupy modern people will evaporate once our circumstances change due to the cumbersome details of life in this society. When people are preoccupied with survival, and are struggling to find something to eat, things like gender will be reduced to their appropriate levels.
Oh wait, we are going to Mars, and then the STARS. Forgive me for forgetting about that myth.
I supported Sanders the time he ran. I have noticed, however, that he is at his feistiest when the Republicans are in power. The logical conclusion then, is that in order to support the best Sanders that we can get, we should vote Republican so that he stays feisty! (Just kidding! I’m tired of his nonsense.)
Thanks for the essay, JMG. I’ll be thinking this one through this afternoon.
JMG, regarding the importance of stories: When I was programming computers back in the 60’s, a joke was making the rounds:
A programmer asks his computer “when are you computers going to start thinking like we humans do?”
The computer replies:” that reminds me of a story…”
Your post on the war of the sexes and all the insights, and pain,from the comment community really have sharpened my understanding of why I’m so reluctant this past 10 years to chance any romantic relationship. My brainwashed fellow Canucks fear/hatred of Trump without looking in the darn mirror , spitting on their palms,hoisting the black flag and cutting some PMC down is enough to drive me to drink. But I’ll refrain from that ditch and work on my art and violin.
first of all, it’s a hoot seeing your first blog’s earliest baby pictures and only FIVE comments! 19 years and countless hours later and WOW.
also,
i’ve been thinking of this (re-posted below as a form of prayer–again– from what you last posted in Magic Monday’s comments, because i’ve long seen these SAME EXACT things as you– real theatre and a real location library/school/institute) in the background of all i’m doing now because i see you getting more weird/artistic in all the best ways and i feel and see real art (that’s actually aware of what it’s SAYING for a change), regarding situationism (although i’m not sure what you mean yet) seems relevant, connected, part of the trajectory of us taking back Story twisting it back to our own ends. experimental magic theatre ritual, YES YES YES:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/338036.html?thread=56716404#cmt56716404
1) Most of my books would make lousy movies. Twilight’s Last Gleaming would make a good political-military thriller flick, and The Hall of Homeless Gods would work on the big screen. I’d also love to see Studio Ghibli do an animated version of The Shoggoth Concerto, though I can’t imagine anyone else doing it without making me want to puke. The rest? As the last rejection slip I got from a big publisher said, my stuff is too quiet and too weird.
What you’re suggesting, as something more like avant-garde ritual theater, is quite another matter. The problem with my books as cinema is that making them believable in realistic cinema wouldn’t work at all. But if that’s set aside, and it becomes a matter of enacting things in a non-representational fashion — semi-abstract masks, interpretive dance, music improvised around a set of established themes — that could work, and work well.
Along those lines, I once worked up n outline for a performance piece with TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as its script. Four performers, an abstract set, plain dance wear with a few costume scraps to be put on and taken off onstage, a very abstract musical accompaniment mostly from hand drums — it could have been cool. Of course I never tried to get it produced.
2) Me, I’ve long admired what Manly P. Hall did when he ended up with absurd amounts of money. He built a center for occult studies, with a big library, some meeting rooms, and a bookstore, and used it as a center for teaching. It’s still there in Los Angeles, doing pretty much what he wanted it to do.
“David Ritz @ #3, I did vote for Sanders in 2016 as a protest vote, just as you say.
It is widely, and I think, correctly believed that Sanders as the Democratic nominee would have won against Trump. His presidency would likely have been one term. In domestic policy, I think he might have done rather well, appointing competent and qualified people to important positions and doing what he could to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest Americans. Foreign policy has never been Sander’s strength; there I think he might not have distinguished himself. I was, and remain, of the opinion that what his two presidential campaigns lacked was a strong anti-war, anti-intervention message. Had he had such a message, I think it is at least arguable that he might even have been able to overcome Democratic establishment dirty tricks.
.”
I wonder if Sanders would have shaken hands with the leader of North Korea in that reality though!
It is worth noting that for all his faults, Trump in his first term at least saw no new American military interventions under his watch , which certainly distinguishes him from his predecessors (although the conflict in Yemen was escalated). Yet, ISIL was eradicated and nothing like it has returned since (even in the wake of COVID and the War in Gaza which one would expect ultra-radical Islamists to take advantage of).
In Mansfield Park the Bad Girl also got kicked to the curb.
On the other hand in The Lady Susan (movie version retitled Love and Friendship) the bad girl wins where wins is defined as acquiring the rich idiot, while the good girl and nice guy end up together. That story has more feminine scheming per page/minute than anything else I’ve read nit that I read a lot of romances.
Conspiracy theories are popular because they tie odd events into a coherent story. People do not like randomness at all. Of course lately the conspiracy theories have been doing rather better than the official narratives.
Subotai says:
August 20, 2025 at 1:08 pm
“John Michael Greer, do you have any advice for young people in the US surviving in a declining economy or possibly moving somewhere else to avoid it?”
—
SUBOTAI:
that’s funny because HIS ENTIRE BLOG 19 years ago from his earliest posts to this very second are all about this! because do you just passively move without DOING anything and with whom???
(smile)
all aspiring writers here please look at how long ago he started and how doggedly Papa G kept on writing what he wanted to without parades and petting.
i also think Sara is the reason Papa can’t sleep for 1-1/2 years and she’s also the reason he has anything believable worth saying. i’m starting to trust people who’ve been in solidly good relationships for a long time, and trust the ideas that branch off from that ability and solidity. anyone else anymore seems like just more mastaburatory writerly “theory” to me. wanking off alone in our bedrooms jumping on the bed with untested fantasies that never can limp crawl or even leap beyond our own private bedroom door.
erika
I wonder about the degree to which the issues between men and women are exacerbated by having later and fewer children. Caring for children can certainly be something of a pressure cooker for a relationship, but certainly the importance of both romantic ego-stroking and erotic passion are usually reduced in the minds of both parties. Although those demographics having more children earlier are not doing so well in terms of functional relationships, come to think of it. I suppose it requires a robust and relatively rigid institution of marriage in order for children to have a salutory effect on the parental relationship. Risky for the kids, too, if it doesn’t work.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Mary, you’re most welcome! My personal favorite of the Heyer novels I’ve read is Venetia — another deconstruction of the “bad boy” cliché, though it cuts deeper — but Cotillion is a fine romp, and Jack richly deserves his comeuppance.
David, no, there wouldn’t have been mass protests. The Democratic base made it very clear during Obama’s two terms that they’re perfectly fine seeing their political darlings betray everything their party supposedly stands for. It’s all performative liberalism, a kind of political cosplay in which politicians pretend to help the poor and downtrodden the way mimes pretend to be stuck in a phone booth. But then you have plenty of that up in Canada, too.
Pygmycory, we’ll certainly get to that!
Aldarion, your thesis advisor was wise. There is no such thing as unbiased knowledge; there are just people who are honest about their biases and people who try to conceal them. Science is ultimately just another way of storytelling — it has special rules in its stories, mostly that all the characters and incidents have to be found somewhere in the data, but it still tells stories of the kind many children love best, such as “Why did this happen?”
Bird, here’s hoping!
Moose, excellent. Yes, exactly — the negotiators figured out that there was at least one other story to tell, the story of “How we settled our disagreement like adults,” and told it.
Subotai, please post this in the monthly open post, which will be going up next Wednesday. As the squib above the comment window says, this comment thread is for comments on the current post — not for random question about anything and everything. (That’s what the monthly open post is for.)
Clay, ah, but romance novels now are not like romance novels fifty years ago. The genre has changed, just as pornography has changed — and it’s in those changes, and the broader changes in cultural narrative that inspired them, that I see the roots of the current mess.
Michael, oh, there’s plenty of self-referential onanism in Situationism. We’ll talk about that (among other things) in another couple of weeks.
Sirustalcelion, granted, but the current tech-bro entrepreneurs are only the advance guard of the rising entrepreneurial elite. As for LLMs (“AI”), the latest Fortune article on that indicates that no fewer than 95% of all corporate attempts to use LLMs have made no money at all — this despite an average investment per company of US$40 billion. My guess is that sometime in the next couple of years, the LLM bubble will pop catastrophically, the current high-flying tech-bros will be humbled, and those entrepreneurs who have had the common sense to focus on providing real goods and services will take their place.
Robert M, it does indeed — and Pratchett’s theory has a lot going for it. I recall the opening line of Hermann Hesse’s first novel, “Im Anfang war der Mythos” — “In the beginning was the Myth.”
John, the stories aren’t always the same. That’s just it. When the stories become the same, that tells you that people have their head tightly wedged in a sunless place and are waiting for reality to kick them good and hard. You’re right, though, that a lot of First World problems will go away in a hurry once that boot arrives…
Chris, interestingly enough, we’ll be talking in two weeks about the way that so many notional radicals combine tolerably keen analyses of what’s wrong with hopelessly weak notions about what to do in response. That’s no accident!
Michael, yes, I recall that one from back in the day!
Longsword, so noted, but I don’t think the situation is all that dire — or maybe it’s just that the winds of change are starting to blow very hard on this side of the 49th parallel.
Erika, thank you for this! Here’s hoping — or, rather, willing…
Siliconguy, Austen used Mansfield Park to target more than one set of romance clichés, and of course she did it very crisply. As for Lady Susan, that was a very early of hers and one that she never revised for publication, the way she turned First Impressions into Pride and Prejudice and Elinor and Marianne into Sense and Sensibility. I wish she’d gone back to it — her mature skills applied to Lady Susan would have produced something utterly delightful.
Jennifer, I don’t think it’s that — the couples I know who’ve dodged the usual relationship bullets and made happy marriages are by and large no more prolific than anybody else. I really do think it’s the ability to step outside the dysfunctional narratives our culture pushes on us so forcefully!
‘The Society of the Spectacle’ was always one of my favorites when studying poststructuralism, postmodernism, etc in college. The other main one was Deleuze & Guattari’s ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, but I haven’t looked at any of that stuff in quite a while. It’s funny how your posts lately are bringing up all stuff I studied 18 or so years ago. Maybe it has something to do with my nodal return.
Looking forward to seeing how you use that lens.
And the thing with narratives is, you can use different ones to make sense of the world in different ways, but none of them are exactly right. For instance, looking at things through a hero, poet or saint narrative, or through an astrological narrative, etc etc. “The way that can be spoken is not the true Way” and all that. That’s why buying into any narrative whole hog can be such a impetus for failure, but yet we need them to make any sort of sense of this strange world.
John ONeil says:
August 20, 2025 at 1:27 pm
“This post comes along at a fortuitous time for yours truly. Thank you for writing, John Michael. The ideas expressed here are helping me tease out my thinking about the predicament, and while my time is waning here, I do care about the world that will be left in my absence. So much to digest here.”
—-
John O’Neil:
you’re on fire lately! cool.
i don’t know whether it’s because i went to high school around a lot of Jewish folks in Cherry Hill, NJ, but i have that fear of being reincarnated in a future holocaust like they collectively also seem to. But seeing what’s happening in Gaza takes away the fear and makes it more of an inevitability that unless we can fundamentally add a new story to occasionally derail the binary pendulum crashing either side, it’s inevitable that we’ll be reincarnated into any number of future holocausts.
i’ve no children and like Papa G and Miss Lady Queen Kimberly Steele, it means i’ve got the TIME to do what the parents cannot as they tend to the Future of Humanity: to fight for the ones who come AFTER us.
the capital “R” Republican vision of their binary version of seeing us childless as distrustful with no buy-in to society is based on a weird premise that i understand but it’s way more nuanced than they think.
my job as a mixed bougie ghetto girly girl that other girls don’t trust because i’ll call ’em out, is to not be likable but jam up your assumptions so The STORY can include me and other current future weirdos as relevant teachers prophets artists visionaries philosophers without “S”s necessarily in their names.
but it’s for ME now and when i come back, whether it’s real or just via our children. i GET to be like this because of the ones who took it for ME, with them having had children or not.
The wiZARD of OZ teaser was good. When will you flesh it out a little?
I took a look at the book on Situationism that JPM mentioned a while back. Quite an interesting dust cover, by the way. One that puts most LP covers to shame. Of the authors that got mentioned there, the only one that resonated for me in a positive way was Celine. The others are way out of my league.
Richard Thompson wrote and recorded a brilliant song about the effects of porn. It’s on his album “Rumor and Sigh:”
[Verse 1]
Asked my daddy when I was thirteen
“Oh Daddy, can you tell me what a lover really means?”
His eyes went glassy, not a word was said
He poured another beer and his face turned red
Asked my mother, she acted the same
She never looked up, she seemed so ashamed
Asked my teacher, he reached for the cane
He said, “Don’t mention that subject again”
[Pre-Chorus]
(Read about love)
I read it in a magazine
(Read about love)
Cosmo and Seventeen
(Read about love)
In the back of Hustler, Hustler, Hustler
[Chorus]
So I know what makes girls sigh
And I know why girls cry
So don’t tell me I don’t understand
What makes a woman and what makes a man
I’ve never been to heaven
But at least I’ve read about love
[Verse 2]
My big brother told me when I was fourteen
“It’s time I showed you what a lover really means
Girls like kissing and romance too
But a boy’s got to know what a man’s got to do”
He gave me a book, the cover was plain
Written by a doctor with a German name
It had glossy pictures, serious stuff
I read it seven times then I knew it well enough
[Pre-Chorus]
(Read about love)
And now I’ve got you
(Read about love)
Where I want you
(Read about love)
I got you on the test bed, test bed, test bed
[Chorus]
So why don’t you moan and sigh?
And why do you sit there and cry?
I do everything I’m supposed to do
If something’s wrong, then it must be you
I know the ways of a woman
I’ve read about love
Well, well, well
When I touch you there it’s supposed to feel nice
That’s what it said in Reader’s Advice
I’ve never been to heaven
But at least I’ve read about love
before i change my mind i want to post this:
Papa i wonder if YOU’d be a good theatre director now because i’m noticing your writing your ideas are getting more …well, mimes pretending they’re in a photo booth… you’ve recently been full of these very ACTIONABLE directions/notes to actors that would give them ROOM to interpret your IDEAS their ways.
your notes have definite actions but leave room for the ARTIST to have something to play of their own.
you’ve been full of ’em lately, that’s why i see YOU evolving into more of a shaper of your own stories as they go to another of play in real life.
just something to tuck in the back of your mind and see if it … brings collaborators to you to help make this happen.
but that’s what Next Year at Adocentyn is about.
(this is a seed thought more for OTHERS HERE, rather than Papa. there are The Quiets here, quietly idling, waiting for their moment to step up…)
Referencing Mary Bennet (#2) and Clay Dennis (#9) and the opening paragraphs of this week’s blog post: man, if we get an analysis of romance novels by JMG on how the glittery hoo haw and the might wang have contributed to the breakdown of male-female relationships — oh, boy!!! words fail me– Can’t wait!!! I vote for this topic for a 5th week essay!
Love Cotillion! Love all of Heyer’s romances and golden age mysteries. I think an author in the Austen/Heyer lineage is Jayne Ann Krentz. (I admit the Harlequin romance/Mills & Boon stuff from the 70’s/80s is not worthy of Heyer but Krentz starts hitting her stride and comedic chops in the 90’s. I also admit, that somewhere in the 2010’s, even Krentz was having trouble navigating what romance readers wanted to read. The audience was splintering. I look forward to it all being explained in a 5th week post. Curious, how many of us here read both ecosophia and romance novels?)
Back to the main point of this post — I have trouble, so I don’t even try, explaining to my blue friends/family why Trump is the lesser evil when compared to Biden/Harris. The DNC is imploding right before our eyes every night on television for those who care to watch. Nicole Wallace on MSNBC has had a furrowed brow since November 2024 and her voice expresses constant disbelief and dismay at the way the U.S. seems to be willingly going.
Here’s hoping Subotai (#8) gets an answer on what young people can do to adapt to this changing world. I don’t think moving would help but plenty here have ex-pat plans.
JMG,
That’s interesting! Most of the functional couples I know are having notably more kids than usual, and the most neurotic and dysfunctional tend to be PMC DINKs. But it may very well be that both factors are downstream of their respective narratives rather than the kid factor being causative.
P. S. Venetia is my favorite of Heyer’s as well! What fun. I may have to pick it up again.
@Jennifer Kobernik (#22):
I got to know a student, some 20 years back, who came to my university from the Dine (the Navaho/Navajo), and she told me a little about her culture. If I understood her rightly, among the Dine a woman may have a child from whatever man she wants to, but that man will play little or no role in its raising. Rather, its mother’s male relatives, especially her brothers, will help her raise her child. (Meanwhile, the child’s biological father will be helping his sisters raise the children they bear.) That way works just as well as ours, too; each Dine child has both female and stable male role models within its family..
It does require extended families that live near to one another, and thus it would be hard pressed to work in a culture like ours, where people routinely move far away from all their close relatives for the sake of careers.
Looking forward to this series. I’ve read a little about Situationism and came away entirely unimpressed by all the pompous sloganeering I encountered, but I’m open to the idea of salvaging something from it.
“No matter what kind of situation you’re in, there are stories that echo it, and also stories that contradict it. You can usually count on finding a story that offers good advice, but you have to pay attention to circumstances and choose the right story.”
That reminded me of the style favoured in policy discussions by Ming China’s Confucian bureaucracy, as described by Ray Huang: they would often advocate for one course of action or another by drawing on examples from Chinese history. Chinese history being millennia long by then and written up by countless acclaimed historians, there was no shortage of historical anecdotes that could be cited to favour practically any policy position (paying tribute to nomads or waging war against them; appointing generals from the military ranks or from among educated officials; and so on… any choice is backed up by historical classics).
I’m as far from them culturally as from Confucianism, but I understand that a similar approach is popular in the more fundamentalist sects of Abrahamic religions: the holy scripture has no shortage of quotes that could be fitted to situations as required. References to histories or scripture can either present stories directly or hint at them through shared cultural knowledge. Either way, it sets a story: things will go now as they supposedly did then, so long as (or unless) we follow the same course. Of course, historical narratives have scarcely less power today, the endless parade of Adolf Hitlers and Neville Chamberlains being the most obvious example.
Jennifer Kobernik @ 22, What a robust institution of marriage requires is economic stability. Which neither of the two dominant economic ideologies, Marxism and free market unregulated capitalism, are capable of providing.
A large number of new entrepreneurs seem to be women. I am seeing woman owned small businesses everywhere, often run on shoestrings, even on a cash basis, no sitting at home and whining because the bank won’t loan them money for these gals. It is a lot more fun baking cakes, growing flowers or crafting jewelry than being somebody’s executive assistant.
This discussion of the power of narratives helps make sense of another odd mystery in Canadian politics: the extremely small number of people outside of specialized fields (such as lawyers advising technology companies) who are talking about bills C2 and C8, and why most of the opposition to the bills are trying to tie them to Trump, despite the absurdities required. These two bills will effectively destroy what remains of our civil liberties in Canada; and the notion that it is the Liberals pushing it, not Trump, cannot occur in a framework in which all actions must be being driven by a single person.
Gonna do some bug fixin’
>One is quite simply that he’s spinning the illusion of giving the American people things that a large majority of them want very badly
FTFY.
Like many Republicans, he’s good at striking poses, terrible at getting anything done. Did you know that there were MORE deportations during the BushClinton Era than now? He’s hoping you don’t notice, just like he wants the Epstein stuff to go away.
>democracy’s already collapsed, due to the usual mechanisms of pedoligarchic capture
FTFY
It’s not just oligarchy or bribery, it’s blackmail too. It’s definitely corruption however you look at it. And all the younguns can see it.
Isaac, I’ve stayed away from A Thousand Plateaus because it has a reputation for causing psychotic breaks in people who study it took closely. I’ve been reviewing The Society of the Spectacle, but also Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life and a good anthology of Situationist essays and position papers; it should be a fun journey.
Phutatorius, watch the movie or read the novel! As for the Thompson piece, I hadn’t encountered that yet, but yeah, that looks like classic Thompson. He pulls no punches.
Erika, I’d need a director, a manager, and actors who could take some very rough ideas, flesh them out, and do something original with them. My sole experience with the realities of theatrical production was a few minor roles in junior high school drama class. That said, if it happens, I’m open to it — I’ve been down weird roads before and they always lead someplace worth going.
Elizabeth, the problem with that as a 5th Wednesday topic is that I’d have to read a few of the current crop of bestselling romances, and I’d rather gargle sudsing ammonia! I don’t think my late wife ever encountered Krentz, more’s the pity.
Jennifer, duly noted. As for Venetia, I can think of many worse ways to spend a few hours!
Daniil, that’s exactly why a classical education is so useful to a governing class. If they’ve got plenty of traditional narratives on hand, whether those are from the Confucian classics or the Greek ones, the products of that system are more likely to make good choices than the products of a “relevant” education that crams them full of a single fashionable narrative in endless rehashed forms.
Moose, true enough.
Other Owen, sure, if you insist on defining democracy as an abstract utopian category and comparing Trump unfavorably to your particular political wet dream, you could make both those arguments. It’s exactly that kind of fetishization of the unattainable that got us into the current mess, and leads to what Vico calls the barbarism of reflection — the violent partisan insanity that brings nations crashing down. There are alternatives, you know.
>Science is ultimately just another way of storytelling — it has special rules in its stories
The real innovation was what I call the Story Factory – with math you can capture a whole bunch of stories in one line of symbols. The history of science has been going on an equation hunt, nailing portions of reality down with those equations. The final goal is to capture everything, all of reality in one very special line of symbols, the so-called Theory of Everything.
Cynically, I think they already did that with the Principle of Least Action, dS = 0.
And I would repeat Monty Python – “It’s only a model”
“Erika, I’d need a director, a manager, and actors who could take some very rough ideas, flesh them out, and do something original with them. My sole experience with the realities of theatrical production was a few minor roles in junior high school drama class. That said, if it happens, I’m open to it — I’ve been down weird roads before and they always lead someplace worth going.”
—
GOOD.
(you are so much FUN and becoming even more so.)
x
>It’s exactly that kind of fetishization of the unattainable
Oh, he’s an improvement over the alternatives. You talk about stories – there are no heroes in this story. I’m curious though, if most politicians are blackmailed, can you still call it democracy? Why?
I started reading romance novels in the early 1970s, when Barbara Cartland’s stories were popular, and read them into the early 1990s or so. Even in that short period of time, they changed in a direction I didn’t care for, early versions of the dynamic you highlight in the post.
I’m also looking forward to learning about Situationism and its potential relevance to addressing our current situation. I went to college in the 1970s but never heard a word about it – but then I didn’t take the kind of courses in which it might have been brought up. What publications about urban design are you referring to in which its influence was positive?
Dear Subotai at #8,
I have young adults still living at home, this is the advice I give them. I do not think there is anywhere in the world that will not have effects from current events-our cousins in Africa are very profoundly tied to the globalized economy even now, and affected by governmental shenanigans in other countries as well as their own. Having climbed less high up the consumption ladder they have less far to fall, but assuming you are used to USA-type goods and services you would simply take a large jump down at once then continue the slow decline by moving to such a location.
My advice is to find a specific location, not too urban-you want local production of food to be possible for the population within walking distance, and not too rural-rural is very insular and currently has few work options, then plant yourself there, dig in deep, work hard, volunteer with local organizations, become a known and reliable contributer to your neighbors. If you are an entreprenrureal type being a known quality will serve you well, if you prefer to work for someone else it will get you hired in businesses too small for computer-based hiring. If you’re already in such a spot and known as someone with a good family reputation you have it made: don’t blow the reputation and you’ll be called on for whatever needs doing. Keep your expenses as low as you can and charge fairly for your labor. Don’t try to tell people what to do if they are not your employees and didn’t ask until you’ve worked with them some years. Maybe your vision for how the volunteer park clean up and pancake breakfast should work would be objectively better, but they have a system that works and coming in trying to change things triggers hostility and rejection of you as well as your ideas. If you’re from an area with a bad reputation in an area you move to, note the stereotypes and deliberately do the opposite (Californians locally to me, for ex, are stereotyped as demanding government services and trying to control their neighbors’ actions on their own property, while trying to impose government allowence for public noxious behavior on the common property).
Mostly think about what kind of person you would want to call if you needed someone to show up and do a task for pay, then be that person. Being known to be reliable and hard working will serve you better in a downsliding economy than anything else you can do.
If you tell people that the only alternative to your awful political platform is Lord Orangeymort, guess who they’re going to side with? (Hint: it won’t be you.)
Also, I found your analysis of women’s smut novels very cogent. Plenty of concern and criticism has been (rightfully) heaped on the male fixation with pornography, but almost nothing has been said about the smut novels, even though they serve the same purpose. Women often read such novels out in the open in public and discuss them with others online and in person, and this behavior is normalized. If men behaved the same way in public with pornography, things would be handled a lot differently…
Another Heyer novel I love is “A Civil Contract,” which deconstructs the Romantic Heroine with a very sharp knife. But, yes, Venetia is utterly delightful!
Off topic, but the portrait of Venetia’s younger brother is also delightful, exasperating as he can be – she accepts him as he is, unlike the designated Good Guy.
Mary Bennet,
I actually think the issues preventing a robust institution of marriage are deeper and more numerous than economic instability, but certainly economic instability hasn’t helped! Nor will I argue that either political party is offering up anything notably efficacious in that regard.
Entrepreneurship has its downsides, but it has worked out very well for our family while allowing both my husband and I to be at home with our kids much of the time. I certainly wouldn’t trade it for employment, but my work history is admittedly rather uninspiring, including retail, a brief stint as a secretary (my boss was at least gay, a notable advantage compared to some of my friends’ lecherous superiors!), a nurse’s aide in a nursing home (which I quit in protest after being told to forge documentation that we’d actually fed the residents), and a bonded contract babysitter for diplomats and celebrities in fancy hotels and venues. I am grateful every day that my economic interactions are now confined primarily to cattle!
P.S. I believe I have been leaving the terminal “t” off your surname is previous weeks’ replies, for which I apologize.
JMG, I would like to read about alternatives to violent partisan insanity. I think Other Owen had a true and valid point, that politics appears to be the last refuge of not just scoundrels but functional incompetents as well. Immigration is a good example. Voters thought they were getting an end to illegal migration into our country; what we did get was performative cruelty inflicted on the most obvious targets, with cameras rolling. Meanwhile the real criminals, the drug and people traffickers are no doubt in hiding, laughing their heads off. There have been NO indictments, much less prosecutions of employers who pay less than minimum wage. I hope this commentariat does understand how the hiring of migrant semi (if that) qualified “jacks of all trades”, masters of none, hurts reputable businesses. When did we see ICE vans in, oh, the Hamptons, rounding up maids and gardeners? Oh, right, never.
Other Owen, that is, “it’s only a story.”
Erika, duly noted!
Other Owen, a representative democracy is a political system in which formal power is conferred on elected officials. That definition says nothing about how honest the officials are (hint: they generally aren’t), or for that matter how honest the elections are (hint: they generally aren’t). It’s purely a description of the mechanism by which formal power is assigned and exercised. If you come back with, “But that’s not real democracy,” that just shows that you’re pitching abstract utopian fantasies rather than discussing a system of government in the real world.
SLClaire, oh, the Situationists didn’t publish in mainstream urban design publications — quite the contrary. They had their own journals, which perched on an unsteady fusion of avant-garde art, psychogeographical criticism, and radical politics.
Nephite, exactly. The sheer crass sleaziness of a lot of current romance novels rivals that of the grubbiest pornography, and yet most women insist that it’s just harmless entertainment — which is of course what most men said about pornography up until the 1970s.
Patricia M, to my mind A Civil Contract is among her best — I don’t enjoy it quite so much as some of the others, but it’s a tour de force of cliché-busting. As for the designated Good Guy in Venetia, Sara always used to refer to him as “the Turnip.” We both wondered, for that matter, whether the name of his manor — Netherfold — was as off-color in Heyer’s imagination as it seemed to us…
Mary, that is to say, you’re outraged at the Orange One because he isn’t pursuing the policies you think he should be pursuing. That’s certainly your right — but I’d suggest that his administration is walking a very narrow line between those of his supporters who think he’s doing too little and those who think he’s doing too much. Meanwhile the crucial activities are going on in private, in grand juries well outside of Washington DC and in changes in funding and policy that are cutting off the corporate mechanisms for mass importation of illegal immigrants.
Every time I hear the word narrative, I reach for my Browning.
Another banger of a post from JMG. We touched upon a few of these themes when our favorite Archdruid appeared on our podcast: https://www.notesfromtheendofti.me/p/eurabiamania-117-the-end-is-nigh
One of the big narratives that still have an outsize grip on the American psyche is the Austrian Painter. 80 years after Der Führer’s passing, he’s still the go-to insult you sling at every opponent. Every geopolitical conflict is a war with LITERALLY HITLER. Every political election is a Manichaean struggle between the forces of Democracy and Freedom against ACTUAL NAZIS who are only a few steps away from sending their opponents into the gas chambers. And, of course, you have a small but loud coterie of people who want to emulate the caricatured cartoon Nazis that never existed outside of Hollywood films. There have been lots and lots of tyrants throughout history, yet for some reason Uncle Adolf has become the bugbear of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Another Great American Bugbear is Jim Crow. Yes, racism still exists in America, but hardly on the same scope as in 1885 or 1955. America is more integrated than it has ever been, and the Ku Klux Klan hasn’t had any kind of real political or social power for several decades. But a whole cottage industry has grown up to wage war against “White Supremacy” and the largely impoverished White folks who still cling to it. White Supremacy, in fact, is the only reason they voted for Orange Hitler instead of the party that openly despises them.
LGBTQ+ activists went especially hard on the Jim Crow narrative, and decided that anybody who criticized things like trans women in women’s prisons or Drag Queen Story Hours was just a hateful bigot who wanted to lynch them. They spent years engaging in this kind of provocative behavior simply so they could have persecutors. (It’s telling that this shift happened not long after gay marriage, when it became increasingly difficult to convince prosperous gay men that they were an endangered and hated minority — and to get donations for gay activist organizations).
For the record, I am neither a Hitler fan nor a Segregationist, though I’ve been accused of both. I have no particular problem with what consenting adults do to or with each other, though I think both “consenting” and “adult” are non-negotiable. I simply question how much these narratives apply to our current situation, and think they’ve done far more harm than good.
Looking forward to the next post in this series. Those narratives are teetering at this point and the danger-haired wokescolds are becoming about as relevant in the mid 2020s as hippies were in the mid 1970s. I’ll be happy to learn some Situationist tactics on narrative-hijacking.
Jennifer Kobernik, I think will discard the terminal ‘t’ on my user name, not my real name, but a minor character from a famous novel, so no apologies are necessary. Thank you for your thoughtful response and best wishes for success in your family’s entrepreneurial endeavors.