Teach me to care and not to care.
“‘Choose your battles carefully’ is now a proverb exclusively cited on occasions wherein there will be no battle. I have never heard someone say, ‘Choose your battles carefully,’ and mean, ‘You need to fight right now.’ Be careful of people who say, ‘Choose our battles carefully’ and never actually choose a battle.”
-Proverbial, Episode 61: I’m Going To Pick A Fight
“What follows is a range of mild movies for children to R-rated films for adults. While there are one or two recent films on this list, I have tried to pick films that I have re-watched many times, and which were valuable to me at different stages in my life. I believe the best movies grow with the viewer and can be understood on multiple levels over the course of a life, while lousy films are only worth watching once and do not grow over time.”
-my latest for CiRCE is a list of movies I recommend.
The most direct experience of democracy which the common man has experienced takes place in the classroom, the board room, or the annual church meeting in a nave. A binary decision is put to a crowd, then there is a show of hands. This leads the common man to think that democratic society is generally governed by what the 51% want.
The last year has proven, rather, that democratic societies are actually governed by the most vocal 7 or 8%.
“Lurking among the jubilant americans venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit.”
-from “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown” in The Atlantic
When told a certain food is very spicy, a child believes it. When told a certain food is not spicy at all, a child believes it. But when told a certain is not too spicy, a child will resolutely doubt the testimony of all the world.
The man who claims it is courageous to suddenly begin doing what everyone else in the world is doing simply wants to apply a gloss of virtue to the filthy rags of fashion.
5. Topo Chico (unflavored)
4. Simple Truth Pineapple (discontinued)
3. Simple Truth Cucumber Melon
2. Good & Gather Ginger Peach
1. La Croix Limoncello
“There is a very real sense in which all the headmaster’s work comes down to the work his teachers do in the classroom. Delivering a classical education is like a relay race. The board runs the first leg, the headmasters runs the second, the curriculum runs the third, but the teacher runs the final leg. If the teacher is not classically minded, everything else was for nothing. A very strong teacher can (sort of) make up for a weak curriculum, a daft motto, a risible mascot, indifferent parents, and ugly buildings, but there is nothing which can make up for a weak teacher.”
-From my latest for CiRCE
This demand is both supplied and incited by sentimental bloggers who tell their readers, “Parenting is hard, but you’re doing great. Society demands too much of you anyway.”
Here is how to fight such flattery.
This recent essay about euthanasia by Michel Houllebecq is (so far as I know) the only essay by France’s most controversial intellectual in more than a year.
As a secularist, lech, and generally loathsome individual, it is nonetheless a remarkable read.
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.