Collapse: The Blog

Happy Birthday, C:TB!

Collapse: The Blog premiered exactly one year ago this minute with its inaugural post, "Things Fall Apart." In that time, it's grown substantially. Here's to another year!

Moving On

For the foreseeable future, I will be posting pretty much exclusively at The Orthosphere, the new common far-right blog set up by Herr Sellanraa. I'll probably continue to cross-post, but in an effort to drum up support for our collaborative effort (and also so I don't have to split my attentions quite so much), I will probably wind up disabling comments at C:TB. Leave feedback over there, not here. (Probably for the best, since I'm given to understand that Wordpress has a much better spam filter than Typepad does).

I'll leave this blog up for reference but I'll probably switch it to a free (i.e., uglier) format; no sense in me shelling out ten bucks a month for a blog I'm pretty much no longer posting to. Meanwhile, enjoy The Orthosphere.

Adminutiae: A Second Note on Comments

I think I have a solution to the case of the disappearing comments. Either because of some in-built algorithim or  because of extrapolation about the nature of comments I have tended to mark "spam," it appears they have been getting directed into the spam folder. I discovered this when I checked it earlier and found about 20 comments of genuine content from regular commenters. I was surprised by this -- questionable comments, I thought, would be held in moderation, not simply dumped unceremoniously into the spam folder.

Comments appear to be marked as spam if they are very long, if they contain two or more links, or if they use any words I have put on the block list (most of which are brand names, thanks to regular visits from spambots -- "Timberland," "North Face," etc.).

I recall never having this problem when comments were moderated, so for the foreseeable future, Collapse: The Blog will return to a moderated comment format (i.e., comments are held in moderation before being published). This will also allow me to relax the blocked-words list to reduce the number of posts that are improperly marked as spam. It will also, I'm sure, stem the tide of douchebaggery that has flooded this blog since I last returned it to an open-comments format.

Adminutia: On the Future of C:TB

Collapse: The Blog turns a year old at the end of this month, which I guess makes this well-timed. I've been giving some thought to taking a break from blogging. It's not that I don't enjoy it or that I'm running out of things to talk about -- on the contrary, this is just about my favorite hobby, and at any given time I have a queue of posts waiting to be published approximately a week long, and ideas for more bouncing around in the back of my head. In fact, I enjoy it so much it's displaced most of my other hobbies, especially reading. This is a problem for me. I've also started neglecting my duties in life, to the extent that I may actually lose my house to the rising sediment level, a la ancient Rome. Who wants to run a vacuum when the fate of souls are at stake?!

I've also had other projects on the backburner with which constant blogging has interfered. For one thing, I've been working on a small essay series to publish here. One of them was a lengthy treatment of the perverse consistency of modern thought, arising from modern man's insensibility to the sacred. It was around seven or eight thousand words when last I looked at it, several weeks ago, but every time I log in to work on it, I have to fight the temptation to write a blog post. That's been a losing battle recently.

So perhaps a lengthy vacation is due me. But I don't want to give up on blogging entirely. I was thinking of starting a far-right equivalent of Ferdinand Bardamu's In Bona Fide, a blog post and headlines aggregator. Think of it as your one-stop shop for (what is for us, anyway) fascinating reactionary discussions and relevant news stories. The input would be relatively minimal, it'd keep my fingers deep in the orthosphere, and it'd give me the time to work on other projects so that I could come back to blogging (maybe) with a whole set of shiny new things to display.

All of this is a little premature, of course; I've still got ideas for posts for probably at least two weeks. Just be aware that changes may be coming.

Adminutia: Comments

We appear to be having some trouble with comments. One commenter reports having multiple comments "disappear" and it's happeend to me once now, too. This isn't a new problem but it's the first time I've heard multiple reports of it in a single day. Until I can get this figured out, I caution all readers to type out their comments in Notepad first, copy and paste them over, and confirm that they posted successfully before closing it.

Should We Aim at Impact?

If there's one sound criticism that can be leveled at the orthosphere, it's that we're eggheads. We complain and criticize and analyze -- Lord, do we analyze! How many digital gallons of e-ink have we spilled? -- but without practical value, to no real end.

Incidentally, this blog was originally founded with an eye toward impact. I was still a Druckerian pseudoleftist then. My desire was to find a new (essentially leftist) social order to replace the failed (essentially leftist) economic social order, or rather, to get the dialogue started on what such a society might look like. Lots of things have changed since then.

I haven't entirely abandoned my desire for impact: I still think we need a relatively comprehensive, book-length statement of our essential beliefs. But my ambition has certainly waned. In part, I have a broader view of what's going on now than I did last year, and a greater sense of my own incapacity to affect much in the way of meaningful change. Part of it, too, is that I've repented so wholly of leftism that I fear the personal consequences of becoming a more aggressive apostate. Certainly, my name would be dragged through the mud. I'd probably lose my job and have great difficulty getting another one. My family would be harrassed. I  might be physically attacked (although given the caliber of our enemies, I'd be more afraid of the legal consequences of acting in self-defense than the medical consequences of not). The list goes on. So anything I did publicly would pretty much have to be pseudonymous, and that automatically limits impact.

But, I think, more importantly, I've come around to the view that social impact as such is probably not the proper aim for an antimodern Christian. The repentance and conversion of society is a good only insofar as it entails the repentance and conversion of individual people. A book-length, anthological treatment of reaction is, I think, still a good idea, because modernity's social, political, and ethical errors are not really distinct from its theological ones. But if such a work ever begins to materialize, it ought to be done with the proper goal in mind: the good of individual souls.

A Record Shattered

Today has seen a record shattered for Collapse: The Blog: over 1,000 hits in 24 hours! Hooray!

Questions Leftists Rarely Ask and Couldn't Answer

What is a right? What does it mean for something to be a right or for someone to have a right to something? Where do rights come from? What endows something with the quality of being a right? What does this quality entail for oneself? For others? What is the relation of right to duty?

What is freedom? Is it reducible to something, like physical ability or the absence of political constraints? If so, is freedom unlimited? If not, what are the limits of freedom? Are they arbitrary? If so, why should anyone care about someone being unfree in some respect but not another? How is freedom related to rights?

What is good? What is evil? Where do good and evil come from? What endows a thing or an action with the character of "evil" or "goodness"? Is it possible for something to be "pure good" or "pure evil"? What would such things look like? Are good and evil reducible to something else, such as pleasure or pain? If so, why don't we simply say "pleasurable" and "painful"? What imbues the pursuit of good and the avoidance of evil with the force of moral obligation? What is morality? What is the difference between "moral" and "good," or is there one at all? Where does morality come from? Is there a difference between a "good person" and a "person who does good things"?

What is reason? Why should we care about reason? What is truth? Why should we care about truth? Is truth good? If so, what makes it good? What is the relation of reason to truth? Is truth better than happiness? If so, why? If not, why not let societies delude themselves with Christianity (assuming it's false)?

What is knowledge? What does it mean to know something? Can you know something if it is false? (Is there such a thing as falseness? If so, what does it mean?) How does one come to know something? Is science the only way to know things? If so, how do you know that science is the only way to know things? If not, what other ways are there to know things? Is introspection valid? Syllogistic reasoning? Intuition? If intuition is valid, how does it differ from common sense? From reason? (What makes a method of acquiring knowledge "valid" or "invalid"?) If common sense is valid, doesn't historical consensus -- the cross-generational continuity of common sense -- matter? If so, why don't you respect it? If not, what makes it questionable?

What is thought? Do "I" think, or does my brain think? Do "I" really exist, apart from my brain? Does my brain really exist apart from the cells that constitute it? What does it mean to "think critically"? Why should we? How do you know you're thinking critically and not merely recycling prejudices acquired through years of conditioning in a leftist society?

What is beauty? What does it mean for someone or something to be beautiful? Why has every society and every culture had some idea of beauty? Why do these ideas differ in their particulars? Is beauty good? Is it the same thing as goodness?

What is life? What does it mean to be alive? Is life reducible to matter? If so, why do we talk about "life" at all? If not, how does it differ? In what ways? Is it a difference of degree or of kind? Is there a "right" to live? What does this right mean, and where does it come from?

What is being? What does it mean for something to be, instead of not to be? Is it meaningful to talk about something not being? Is death the same as not being? If so, why does part of me (my corpse) remain after death? If life is mere matter and my matter remains after death, what does it mean to say that I have died? What is death?

What is authority? Why should we question it? Is "question authority" not an authoritative statement? If not, why not? If so, why shouldn't I question it? Is it the case that we should question authority because it is morally suspect? If so, what makes it morally suspect? And if so, doesn't that make your command to question authority itself morally suspect? Or are you commanding me without authority? If so, why should I listen to you? If there's a good reason for me to listen to you, doesn't that make the command authoritative? If it does, doesn't that make you morally suspect? Does that mean I should only listen to those whom I have no good reason to listen to? (But if so, doesn't this imbue them with the character of authority?)

What's the point of everything? Is there one? If so, what is it? How do you know? How do you know you're right? (What is right, anyway?) Is it objective and real or subjective and solipsistic? If the latter, is it really the point? If not, why not just say there is no point? And if there is no point, why live? Why respect the lives of others? Why care about "good" or "evil"? Why even care about pleasure or pain?

Are all of these questions answerable? How do you know? Have you tried to answer them all?

If not, are you so sure you're a critical thinker?

Comments Reopened

Tooling around with the security settings seems to have eliminated our spam problem. The last month or so has seen all of one spam comment held for my approval. As such, it now seems silly to continue moderating comments -- so consider them reopened. Just mind the editorial policy and don't be a jerk, spammer, troll, or blasphemer.

R.I.P. Ron Smith

I was saddened to hear of the recent death of Ron Smith, a 27-year veteran of the air waves back in my home town, beloved of some of my right-wing friends and, apparently, a regular reader of this blog.

Whenever I get an endorsement like this, it's a reminder of the tremendous potential which modern technology affords us to reach people. If a modestly-educated nobody like myself can generate a small following of respectable, insightful, and intelligent people, imagine how much of an effect a long career of daily radio talks can have in jarring people from their brainless acceptance of liberal orthodoxy.

God bless him, and may he rest in peace.