Alan Jacobs's Blog, page 89

Donald Trump says that as President he could declassify d...

Donald Trump says that as President he could declassify documents just by “thinking about it.” NOT TRUE. He also needed to do this:

Bewitched Samantha GIFfrom Bewitched GIFs

Russell Moore: Today’s American evangelical Christianity...

Russell Moore: 

Today’s American evangelical Christianity seems to be more focused on hunting heretics internally than perhaps in any other generation. The difference, however, is that excommunications are happening not over theological views but over partisan politics or the latest social media debates.

I’ve always found it a bit disconcerting to see fellow evangelicals embrace Christian leaders who teach heretical views of the Trinity or embrace the prosperity gospel but seek exile for those who don’t vote the same way or fail to feign outrage over clickbait controversies.

But something more seems to be going on here — something involving an overall stealth secularization of conservative evangelicalism. What worries me isn’t so much that evangelical Christians can’t articulate Christian orthodoxy in a survey. It’s that, to many of them, Christian orthodoxy seems boring and irrelevant compared to claiming religious status for already-existing political, cultural, or ethnonational tribes. 

A strong and sad Amen to this. It is perfectly clear that there is a movement in America of people who call themselves evangelicals but have no properly theological commitments at all. But what’s not clear, to me anyway, is how many of them there are. Donald Trump can draw some big crowds, and those crowds often have a quasi-religious focus on him or anyway on what they believe he stands for — but those crowds are not large in the context of the entire American population. They’re very visible, because both Left and Right have reasons for wanting them to be visible, but how demographically significant are they really?  

I have similar questions about, for instance, the “national conservatism” movement. Is this actually a movement? Or is it just a few guys who follow one another on Twitter and subscribe to one another’s Substacks? 

Questions to be pursued at the School for Scale, if I can get it started. 

Mark Zuckerberg Welcomes YOU to the Metaverse

an allegory of American political life, especially online

Dante, Inferno, Canto XXX (Hollander translation): 

And I to him: ‘Who are these two wretches
who steam as wet hands do in winter
and lie so very near you on your right?’

‘I found them when I rained into this trough,’
he said, ‘and even then they did not move about,
nor do I think they will for all eternity.

‘One is the woman who lied accusing Joseph,
the other is false Sinon, the lying Greek from Troy.
Putrid fever makes them reek with such a stench.’

And one of them, who took offense, perhaps
at being named so vilely, hit him
with a fist right on his rigid paunch.

It boomed out like a drum. Then Master Adam,
whose arm seemed just as sturdy,
used it, striking Sinon in the face,

saying: ‘Although I cannot move about
because my legs are heavy,
my arm is loose enough for such a task.’

To which the other answered: ‘When they put you
to the fire, your arm was not so nimble,
though it was quick enough when you were coining.’

And the dropsied one: ‘Well, that is true,
but you were hardly such a truthful witness
when you were asked to tell the truth at Troy.’

‘If I spoke falsely, you falsified the coin,’
said Sinon, ‘and I am here for one offense alone,
but you for more than any other devil!’

‘You perjurer, keep the horse in mind,’
replied the sinner with the swollen paunch,
‘and may it pain you that the whole world knows.’

‘And may you suffer from the thirst,’ the Greek replied,
‘that cracks your tongue, and from the fetid humor
that turns your belly to a hedge before your eyes!’

Then the forger: ‘And so, as usual,
your mouth gapes open from your fever.
If I am thirsty, and swollen by this humor,

‘you have your hot spells and your aching head.
For you to lick the mirror of Narcissus
would not take much by way of invitation.’

I was all intent in listening to them,
when the master said: ‘Go right on looking
and it is I who’ll quarrel with you.’ […]

‘Do not forget I’m always at your side
should it fall out again that fortune take you
where people are in wrangles such as this.
For the wish to hear such things is base.’ 

Ché voler ciò udire è bassa voglia — to will to listen to such contemptible trash, to desire it, is base, low, self-degrading. Let me be Virgil to your Dante: When people online or on TV are going at each other, when they’re engaged in their spittle-flecked mutual recriminations — avoid it, flee it. Find something, almost anything, else to do with your time. 

forking paths

Deepfake audio has a tell and researchers can spot it — yes, there’s a tell now, but will there always be? Deepfake audio, deepfake video, DALL-E image generation — all of this will be getting better and better, and it’s difficult to imagine that tools to identify and expose fakes will keep up, much less stay ahead. 

I think we’re looking at not one but two futures — a fork in the road for humans in Technopoly. (In many parts of the world it will be a long time before people are faced by this choice.)

A few will get frustrated by the fakery, minimize their time on the internet, and move back towards the real. They’ll be buying codex books, learning to throw pots or grow flowers, and meeting one another in person. 

The greater number will gradually be absorbed into some kind of Metaverse in which they really see Joe Biden transformed into Dark Brandon or hear Q whisper sweet nothings into their ears. In the movies the Matrix arises when machines wage war on humans, but I think what we’ll be seeing is something rather different: war won’t be necessary because people will readily volunteer to participate in a fictional but consoling virtual world. 

I know which group will have more freedom, and more flourishing; but I wonder which will have more power? Not everyone who stays in the real world will do so for decency’s sake. 

Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon | WIRED:There’s a...

Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon | WIRED:

There’s a parallel between the seemingly unmoderated theorists of r/findbostonbombers and the Citizen app and those in QAnon: None feel any responsibility for spreading unsupported speculation as fact. What they do feel is that anything should be solvable. As Laura Hall, immersive environment and narrative designer, describes: “There’s a general sense of, ‘This should be solveable/findable/etc’ that you see in lots of reddit communities for unsolved mysteries and so on. The feeling that all information is available online, that reality and truth must be captured/in evidence somewhere.” 

I would amend to “somewhere on the internet.” The assumption here is not simply that “the truth is out there” but “the truth is out there and I can find it without ever having to get off my ass.” 

the dust that you are

After the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, C. S. Lewis wrote to an American friend, 

You know, over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) – awe – pity – pathos – mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said ‘In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.’ Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendour. 

You either feel this kind of thing or you don’t. It makes sense that Lewis would feel it, not so much because he was British — as a native Irishman he had somewhat complicated feelings about that — but because he had been steeped all his life in stories, in histories true and feigned, about a monarchical world. He didn’t just know about the King’s Two Bodies, he felt that doctrine in his bones. Thus his overwhelming “awe – pity – pathos – mystery” at the doubleness of the moment: an ordinary young woman, wife and mother, bearing in her own body and on her own head the astonishing idea that we are all meant to be kings and queens, and to rule on behalf of the One True King. As the hymn says, 

Finish, then, thy new creation;
true and spotless let us be. 
Let us see thy great salvation 
perfectly restored in thee. 
Changed from glory into glory,
till in heav’n we take our place, 
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise. 

That hymn is the secret text of Lewis’s most famous address, “The Weight of Glory,” which describes the burden we feel when we face this high calling: 

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God … to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness … to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. 

The coronation of Elizabeth as Queen, seen in a certain way, the way Lewis saw it, is the coronation of one nation’s Queen but also a dramatic performing of this weight of glory — the glory and the weight in equal measure, poised in juxtaposition.  

One of the most-quoted sentences in the days since Elizabeth’s death has been the pledge she made on her twenty-first birthday in 1947: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” And I don’t think anyone — friend or enemy of the British Crown — doubts that she meant it when she said it and that she tried to live up to it for the rest of her very long life. And thus many, in these recent days, have felt a rather different “awe – pity – pathos – mystery” than Lewis felt at the coronation: in this case this peculiar complex of emotions arises from seeing one who has borne a burden, a weight, for a very long time finally laying that burden down. 

As I say, either you feel this way or you don’t. It’s perhaps a little harder for us Americans to feel it, because we are not accustomed to the idea that the head of state can be someone altogether different (and fulfilling an altogether different function) than the head of government. On rare occasions something can happen to awaken the impulse even in us. JFK’s assassination was that for many, and gave birth to a kind of cult of Lost Hope — the Camelot myth. Perhaps a better example was provided to me by my mother-in-law, who is a year older than Elizabeth and is still with us: She said that when FDR passed “it was like everyone’s father had died.” Likewise, many Christians, and not just Roman Catholics, felt that the stooped, frail figure of Pope John Paul II in his final years was an image of what we all might be someday — what we all are, in a way, at least sometimes. 

But whether you feel it or not, I will say: Just as the coronation of the Queen was an image of something meant for all of humanity, so too her funeral. She has borne the weight faithfully, and she has laid down her burden. Her obsequies then are not just about “the King’s two bodies” but about all of us. If we allow it, Elizabeth can be our representative: made up of “the dust that we are,” but also one who has born the weight of glory for a very long time, and now can rest; now can cast her crown before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and then forever be lost in wonder, love, and praise. 

rebellion against stability

I’m not a huge fan of the music of Kelly Lee Owens, but I am a huge fan of this interview:

“I grew up in a working class village in Wales and choirs were part of everyday life,” explains Owens. “It’s almost like National Service; everybody has to join a choir. People talk about this idea of finding your voice and I think that’s what happened when I was listening to those choirs. Hard men, ex-miners in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, singing with so much passion. Music had never hit me like that before. It made me want to explore my own voice. How could I express my emotions with this sound?

“The next step was Kate Bush,” she says, laughing. 

Of course that’s how it works: you go from Welsh miners’ choirs to Kate Bush and then you become a successful musician. (Also: “My God, don’t you miss that? Don’t you miss hearing something that good in the Top 5?”) Later: 

Much as I love working on the laptop, there is something about a machine like Dark Time that I find truly inspiring. You can program whatever you want and it doesn’t matter if it’s correct or not. It’s as if analogue is designed to go wrong because you always make mistakes. You press this button or put the kick here instead of here. So much of my stuff has that. I wish you could get plugins to fuck up more than they do. I think we need more of that randomness in music! 

When the interviewer agrees and continues, “Obviously, you can do mouse clicks just as easily,” KLO replies, 

But is it as much fun? Can you still create chaos? Will that kick be ridiculously late? Are you interested in making perfect music? I’m not. What does that even mean? Perfect music. What is perfect? A lot of time in the studio seems to be spent reintroducing variation and accident. I suppose you might call it humanness. Nudging things forward, nudging them back, dipping the volumes, trying to keep the listener engaged…. Analogue keeps things interesting. It rebels against stability. 

Back to the rough ground! 

Look for my forthcoming novel The Queue Towers

Look for my forthcoming novel The Queue Towers 

file-selves

Sheila Fitzpatrick:

‘Man lives in the real world; but there’s also a parallel world: a paper one, a bureaucratic one. So the passport is the person’s double in this parallel world.’ The comment comes from a Russian woman in her thirties interviewed as part of a study in St Petersburg in 2008. She might have been channelling the philosopher Rom Harré, who called these bureaucratic doubles ‘file-selves’. It mattered a lot to Soviet citizens what their file-selves looked like: the wrong social class or nationality entered in an internal passport, or a notation restricting movement, could be a disaster. But file-selves matter elsewhere too. The Anglosphere – the UK, Canada, the US, Australia – may have eschewed the Russian/Soviet path of a compulsory internal passport, distinct from the passport required for foreign travel, but drivers’ licences and credit records often serve the same functions, and electronic identity cards may not be too far away. The British, while skittish about mandatory ID cards, have the largest number of surveillance cameras per capita of any country except China.

This is good … but maybe not as good as my essay on passports?