Green vs. Good Cheer
Yes, we can have joy during the Aenean Age.
As I write this, Christmas is coming. People are preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus through a combination of ceremony, togetherness, feasting, and excess consumerism. That latter component makes eco-puritans angry.
For those who missed it, the
hosted a debate over whether humanity is doomed to ever lower standards of living due to shortages of resources, or humanity is on the crux of a true space age and we have time to start bringing resources from elsewhere before the Earth runs out. argued for the former and yours truly for the latter. I won -- magnificently, of course -- but I had to work at it. Ahnaf did his homework, and humanity's world consumption has gone up greatly since I debated the subject 45 years ago.I wish to draw your attention to some angry comments on my post:
Not exactly the Christmas spirit! Downright Grinchy, even. But he does have a bit of a point: We do need to seek other sources of joy besides the transient dopamine hit that comes from shopping and receiving presents. There are many mystics and religious figures -- including many Christian priests and pastors -- who agree with this sentiment. Let's review these, and then I will reveal a potential treasure trove of expensive toys, toys far beyond the reaches of the typical upper middle class Man Cave, which are nonetheless compatible with the Aenean Age. You can have fun and be Greener than the eco-puritans. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Economic Security
Part of our collective drive for More is that collectively we have negative net wealth. As Adam Smith wrote in A Theory of Moral Sentiments:[Part 1, Section III, Chapter 1]
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience? To one in this situation, all accessions of fortune may properly be said to be superfluous; and if he is much elevated upon account of them, it must be the effect of the most frivolous levity.1
The undercurrent of dread from our indebtedness can mute the joy from a new toy or an all-you-can-eat orgy at Golden Corral. I have written on this before.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/debt-is-dumb
And for those ultra responsible savers in the audience, your security would be greatly enhanced if we switched from Santa Claus Economics to something sustainable.
Imagine being able to go to your local bank for setting up an IRA -- and still being able to sleep soundly. It is possible.
Personal Security
Why do people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a McMansions that they barely have time to live in thanks to needing two incomes and long commutes? Answer: to get away from criminals, beggars, and bullies for their brainy kids. The commutes get ever longer and the expenses ever higher thanks to ever more aggressive social engineering on the part of today's Demoncrats.
Opportunities Abound! The Democrats Have Gone Brown!
What happens when you let homeless people camp out in your city parks and sidewalks? What happens when you stand aside and let anarchists (the bad kind) occupy neighborhoods for months at a time? Wha…
Today's Naughty Right is Greener than the Woke Left.
Community
Man is a social animal. Sorry Ayn. This is a fundamental problem with Objectivism and some other forms of libertarianism. On the other hand, the United States of America is not a society; it's a semi-democratic empire of extraordinary magnitude. Definitely not a village! To restore the joys of community, we need to make Community important again. The state and federal governments need to stick to high level matters and leave local governance to localities. And we need more localities.
Being the Big Man in mythical Mayberry is orders of magnitude cheaper than being a world class Big Man. And being the fairest lady of Mayberry requires far less fashion, bionics, or outright degradation than being an influencer on Instagram, YouTube, or TicToc.
Health
Better to be healthy and live in a run down farmhouse than to be fading in health with an expensive yacht. Moving around -- such as doing real work yourself vs. letting machines do all the work -- is reputed to be healthy. Ditto for pasture raised beef and chicken, vs. sick mistreated feedlot animals. Sex and sanity are pleasant as well. Getting some toxins out of the environment is likely useful in this regard.
Mysticism and Spirituality
Master meditators have been known to experience bliss far beyond the pleasure of a private jet ride, a cruise, or a bottle of Dom Perignon. Many writers on Dissident Right Substack have written on the subject, for we truly live in an anti-spiritual age -- the opposite of the Age of Aquarius I was promised as a child. The lefty Flower Children have gone from Visualize World Peace to Five Minute Hate -- on the hour, every hour. And their children are addicted to spirituality disrupting devices.
Many writers on the Dissident Right have written on the subject.
Once upon a time, Republican meant Protestant. Today, Dissident Right Substack seems to be dominated by Roman Catholics, with Eastern Orthodox close behind. Mainline Protestants -- once the foundation of the American Right -- appear to be outnumbered by pagans.
It struck me as Greene talked about the faith question that in any right-wing gathering of this sort, there is probably simultaneously a much higher percentage of hard-core Christians and a higher percentage of pagans than would be found in any equivalently-sized group of normies who have been brought together for non-religious reasons. The dissident right are men of many faiths, but they are almost invariably men of faith. This is not accidental.
I think I know why. The Mainline Protestant denominations have dumbed down their doctrines and their ceremony in a desperate attempt to be Relevant. Worse yet, to appeal to youth, many Protestant churches have adopted anti-mystical practices, practices nearly as bad as watching Tic Toc videos. As a former High Church Episcopalian, this makes me sad. I yearn to mix satisfying spirituality with Biblically correct religion:
(Between leaving the Episcopal Church and becoming a Sabbath keeping puritan, I went through a period of pagan newage myself. I learned a lot of nonsense and met a bunch of deluded people, but in the process found a few things that actually work -- and are Christian compatible. Maybe I'll write on this next year.)
Family
Intact families with a stay-at-home Mom while the children are young provide far more net joy than a fancy sports car or an expensive boarding school education. Our obsession with Gross Domestic Product utterly ignores the huge amount of value that traditional families provide which is off the books.
Yes, it is possible to have more joy while cutting GDP.
But with all the eco-friendly GDP-cutting joy listed above, you can splurge for the holidays and still be Greener than Al Gore.
And Now for the Toys!
Go ahead and buy your kids, your sister's kids, your brother's kids, etc. some cool toys for Christmas. The cheap plastic junk from Walmart that fills the space under Christmas trees is not what's depleting the planet. Both the joy of giving and the joy of receiving are worth it.
It's the expensive toys for adults which have the impact: boats, motor homes, jet skis, big houses, expensive hobbies, etc., especially once you factor in the travel to work and daycare needed to earn the aforementioned items.
I have a Christmas present for you: an eco-friendly and economically sustainable excuse to own some serious adult toys, toys that make your Man Cave filled with computers and audio-video equipment look pathetic by comparison.
It starts by recalling the purpose of Play. Play is the natural preparation for the duties of adulthood. Our education system demands unnatural learning. Learning must fit a Schedule, with tons of testing to kill the remaining joy of learning. Let your children go all in on what they are interested in and you can buy them real toys, toys that you or your spouse can enjoy playing with along with your child.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/a-more-natural-learning-cycle
Is your son interested in woodworking? Buy some real tools and real wood, and spend quality time in the shop. (Stick to hand tools when they are young. Look up videos of French and Japanese traditional carpentry for inspiration.) Is your daughter interested in fashion? Get a good sewing machine, cloth, and patterns and go with it. Is either interested in music? Buy the instruments and jam. Electronics? Set up a mad scientist studio. And so forth.
To afford this, ditch the duty to be a generalist and build a resume to get into a good college. Even if it takes your child 5 abandoned hobbies to get to the one which leads to a career, if such play shaves a mere year off of expensive college, you can afford a LOT of cool toys compared to the cost of today's recommended career path for your children. (But still, let your children prove their interest with the cheap stuff and maybe even self-purchased toys before investing in the real stuff.)
And then there are toys and fun just for you. Let's review the difference between Work and hobbies. Many of the activities that we consider to be hobbies are the "work" of a more primitive society:
Hunting and fishing (getting meat)
Raising animals (getting meat)
Gardening (getting plant foods)
Sports (preparing for war)
Puttering in the workshop (building furniture, tools, etc.)
Socializing (politics)
Crafts (clothing and other home goods)
Most adult play is a less serious form of survival tasks. Though we are in part spiritual beings, we also have an animal chassis. Animals have survival instincts. They want to do the things that further their survival. We have such instincts as well, but they are suppressed and perverted by our managerial system.
There is a difference between tinkering with a car in the back yard and applying left front wheels to hundreds of cars per day.
There is a difference between being a yeoman farmer and a slave or peasant farmer.
There is a difference between having a hobby garden and spending all day out in the fields.
There is a difference between war gaming with friends and being inducted into the military without choice in when to fight.
There is a difference between love making and being a sex slave or prostitute.
While I endorse early specialization, I do not endorse extreme specialization. Yes, we should spend extra time on what we are particularly good at and sell the results to those who aren't good at such skills. But complete specialization is for insects.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Robert A. Heinlein
During the early Industrial Revolution, tools and machines were scarce. It made sense to maximize machine utilization through hyperspecialization and mass production, reducing humans into worker units. But as wealth increased we had the wealth needed to return to craftsmanship and independence. Instead, the Keynesians saw "Unemployed Resources" and looked for means to stimulate the artificial industrial economy.
Meanwhile, the Stimulated Industrial Economy is destroying the planet and is less fun than advertised. "Alienating" is the term Karl Marx used. But instead of embracing atheism and Hegelian idiocy, as Marx did, I wish to address Alienation with the Law of Moses and common sense reasoning. This post is an intro. Everything you have read was meant to be an intro to this much bigger subject, but after people balked at the length of my guest post on the Tree of Woe's stack, I have resolved to break things into manageable pieces.
I will follow up on this post after the Christmas season. For those who are impatient, here is the summary:
When capital was scarce, dehumanizing specialization made sense because it kept expensive tools running at maximum utilization.
We now have enough capital that we can go back to a system of craftsmen with tools sitting idle much of the time.
But we don't have a financial system to deploy that capital effectively.
If you get bored during the holidays, see this article on a stock exchange suitable for yeoman businesses. If you don't like Managerialism, it is a required read.
Otherwise, just enjoy the holidays and I'll remind you on the other side. Merry Christmas!
Theory of Moral Sentiments Part 1, Section III, Chapter 1
I have a response essay “in the works” … so not so fast 😉 😘
Just a small quibble as well… my position is that we are headed toward a New Dark Age that will basically mean several centuries (perhaps millennia) of lower living standards and “bottoming out,” till some new arrangement (Ecotopic in nature) is formulated by future human societies.
I don’t believe we will have “colonies in space” because I do not believe that the surplus energy, metals and materials to do such things… exist. Btw, this also applies to super expensive silliness such as “space mining”. (I will put some numbers forward in the response piece specifically to target said notion, so stay tuned 😊)