How I Met Elon Musk at Waffle House

[Please note that none of the below events have ever actually occurred.]

I met Elon Musk at Waffle House recently. Given the stature of Waffle House's contributions to American society, I think we can all agree the story is worth recounting.

Pope Leo I, Sermon 82 (for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter & Paul)

 [A quick translation for the feast today, from the "most Roman of Popes," whose Latin eloquentia shines through very strongly in the original. A very important document for understanding Late Antique Rome and the Papacy.]

The whole world, Beloved, truly participates in all the Holy Solemnities: and the piety of the One Faith demands that, whenever any deed, done for the salvation of all, is being recalled in worship, it should be celebrated everywhere with common rejoicings.

Nonetheless, today's feast demands a special honor and exultation unique to our own City, beyond the reverence which this feast merits throughout the whole circle of lands. In this place where the departure of these preeminent Apostles was first glorified, let there be a primacy of joy on the day of their martyrdom!

For these are the men through whom the Gospel of Christ, O Rome, dawned for you in splendor, and through whom you, who were the Teacher of Error, were made the Student of Truth. These are your Holy Fathers and True Shepherds, who founded you in a much better and much more fortunate way, grafting you into the Heavenly Kingdoms, than those men by whose efforts the first foundations of your walls were laid: of whom the one who gave you your name defiled you with his brother's blood.

These are the men who have raised you to this glory: that through the Holy See of Blessed Peter you have been made a Holy Clan, a Chosen People, a Priestly and Royal State, and the Head of World, and now preside over a wider area through divine religion than through earthly dominion. For although you once extended the sway of your Empire throughout land and sea, increasing it by many victories, nevertheless that which violent labor subdued is less than that which the Christian Peace has embraced.

For God is good, and just, and omnipotent, who has never denied his mercy to the human race, who by his most abundant acts of beneficence has always taught all mortals in common to know him, who has had mercy on the blindness and wickedness of those who wandered at their own will, rushing headlong to ever worse things, by his even more discerning prudence and his even deeper piety, and sent his own Word, equal to him and coeternal with him. This one was made flesh, and thus united divine nature to human nature, so that his bending down to the lowest things might become our exaltation to the highest things.

But so that the effects of this unspeakable grace might be diffused throughout the whole world, with his divine providence he prepared the Roman Empire. Additions were gradually made to its borders, so that the totality of all nations everywhere might be made neighbors and acquaintances. For it was suitable for that work which was being divinely prepared that many kingdoms be made allies under one Imperium, so that the universal proclamation might quickly find accessible peoples, held under the discipline of a single state.

This state, however, ignorant of the author of her exaltation, although she was master of nearly all the nations, was herself a slave to the errors of all nations, and believed that she had made religion great because she had rejected no falsehood. But then, as tenaciously as she had been bound fast by the devil, so miraculously was she set free by Christ.

For when the Twelve Apostles, having received the ability to speak all languages through the Holy Spirit, had undertaken to pervade all the world with the Gospel and had distributed the parts of the earth among themselves, Blessed Peter, Primate of the Apostolic Order, was destined for the citadel of the Roman Empire: so that the light of truth which was being revealed for the salvation of all nations might diffuse itself more effectively from the Head itself through the whole Body of the World.

For what nation did not then have people in this City? Or what nations were ever ignorant of what Rome had taught? Here the divergent opinions of Philosophy must be trampled underfoot, here the vanities of earthly wisdom must be dissolved, here the worship of demons must be suppressed, here the impiety of all sacrifices must be destroyed, in the very place where every practice and belief that had ever been established by the varied errors of mankind had been collected and was being maintained with very diligent superstition.

To this city you, Most Blessed Peter the Apostle, were not afraid to come, and while the sharer in your glory, Paul the Apostle, was still occupied with setting the other churches in order, you, far more constant than when you walked upon the sea, entered this forest of raging beasts, this ocean of most turbulent depths. And you, who in the house of Caiphas had trembled at the servant-girl of the High-Priest, did not fear Rome, Master of the World.

For surely neither the power of Claudius nor the cruelty of Nero was a lesser thing than the judgment of Pilate and the fury of the Judeans?

Therefore it was the violence of your love which conquered all the reasons for fear; and you did not think it right to tremble at those whom you had undertaken to love. Indeed you had already conceived this passion of fearless charity at that time when the profession of your love for the Lord was strengthened by the mystery of threefold questioning. For from this intention of your mind he asked nothing else but that, pasturing the sheep of him whom you love, you give out that same food with which you yourself had been filled.

Your confidence had also been increased by so many signs of miracles, so many gifts of charisms, so many experiences of virtues. Already you had taught those peoples who had believed from the circumcision; already you had founded the Antiochene Church, where first the dignity of the Christian Name had arisen; already you had imbued Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithinia with the laws of the Preaching of the Gospel. You were not doubtful about the outcome of your work, nor were you ignorant of the extent of your own life, as you brought to the Roman citadels the Trophy of the Cross of Christ, a Cross through which, by divine pre-ordination, the Honor of Power and the Glory of Suffering awaited you.

To this same place your fellow Apostle, the Vessel of Election and special Teacher of the Gentiles, Paul, arrived and was joined to you at that time when all innocence, all decency, and all liberty were suffering under the Imperium of Nero. The fury of this man, inflamed through his excess in all vices, fell headlong into this fire of his own insanity, so that he was the first to inflict atrocity of a general persecution on the Christian Name, as though the grace of God was able to be extinguished through the murder of the saints, for whom in fact this was the greatest reward, that their contempt for this life become the gaining of eternal happiness.

'Precious,' therefore, 'in the sight of God is the death of his saints': nor is that religion founded on the Sacrament of the Cross of Christ able to be destroyed by any kind of cruelty. The Church is not diminished by persecutions, but increased: and always the Field of the Lord is clothed with richer fruit while the grains, which die alone, are born multiplied.

Thus the thousands of Blessed Martyrs testify to how much offspring those two shoots of divine seed have produced. These thousands of imitators of the Apostolic Triumphs have filled our city with bands robed in purple and shining far and wide with red, and have as it were crowned her with one crown assembled out of the honors of many gems.

In this garrison, Beloved, which has been divinely prepared for us to show us examples of patience and to strengthen our faith, we must indeed rejoice universally by the commemoration of all the saints, but in the preeminence of these fathers we should deservedly glory even more exultantly, whom the grace of God raised to so high a peak among the members of the Church that, in the body for which Christ is Head, he has established them, as it were, as the twin lights of the eyes.

About their merits and virtues, which surpass all ability to speak of, we ought to think nothing different, nothing divergent: because their election made them peers, and their labor made them the same, and their end made them equal.

As we ourselves have experienced and as our ancestors have demonstrated to us, so we believe and have confidence that, among all the labors of this life, in obtaining the mercy of God we will always be helped by the prayers of our special patrons: so that, as much as we beg mercy for our own sins, so much will we be raised up by the merits of the Apostles.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs one and the same Power with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one Divinity, forever and ever. Amen.

Abortion, Infanticide, and the Hubris of Technological Modernity

Abortion, Infanticide, and the Hubris of Technological Modernity

For anyone living under a rock (or in a blessed state of not-following-the-news, which I highly recommend), this past Friday, June 24th, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart and what would normally be the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, denying the presence of a Constitutional right to abortion and returning the issue of abortion regulation to the states. 

The issue of abortion is in many ways a unique one in American politics; from its very beginning until now, it has cut across the typical lines of partisan affiliation and disrupted and forged ideological alliances almost at random. Starting out as a "Catholic issue"--one of a bevy of Eugenics-related progressive causes favored by almost every American social and religious group but bitterly opposed by Catholics--in short order it succeeded in breaking apart practically every existing political alliance that had defined American politics prior to the 1960s and forging (very unexpected) new ones. It would be difficult to overstate the potential of the present decision to alter American politics and aid in large-scale "realignment" of American coalitions, alliances, and ideologies.

I don't want to talk about any of that, though. What I instead want to talk about is what the abortion issue--and especially the terms in which it is debated--tells us about the society we live in and its underlying, broadly shared assumptions.

What is abortion?

A Short Guide to Barefoot Walking

A Short Guide to Barefoot Walking

I do a lot of walking, and a lot of walking barefoot, regularly exploring roads, sidewalks, fields, and woods in this scandalous state of undress. When people learn this, they generally have some questions for me, questions like: why? 

I have never really been able to answer this question, so here is an essay on the topic.

The simplest and probably most truthful answer to the question is that I've been doing it since I was a kid, when my brothers and I would spend summers on a cattle farm in rural Ohio, and I kept doing it when I got older because some of my brothers did too and I thought it was kinda cool and I don't know, it was something to do, you know?

In the eyes of the general public, though, barefoot walking has gained a great deal of mystique that is almost entirely unjustified. I promise that I do not walk barefoot to gain health benefits in regard to my posture, or because I want to be in closer touch with the Earth my mother. Barefoot running is supposedly good for you, and lots of people now wear barefoot-shoes to imitate the barefoot stride, but to be honest every time I've tried to run barefoot I've gotten horrible shinsplints. Go figure.

Still, I think the above qualifies this essay as CULTURALLY RELEVANT. So if you, dear reader, ever feel compelled to try to get into walking barefoot, here is a Guide to the topic, which mostly explains in great detail why you absolutely should not get into walking barefoot. It is divided into BULLET POINTS and STEPS, which are all out of order, and culminates in a mystical ramble on the nature of intelligence and divinity. I'm sorry.

The Earth in Anarchy

The Earth in Anarchy

This is most likely the last thing I will ever write in this space on mass shootings.

This is not an issue I prefer to comment on for a very large number of reasons, the most emphatic of which is that it has become clear to me that it is precisely the writing and proclaiming and glorifying of such events that is most responsible for their continuation, as a virtually unique, imitative, mass-media-driven phenomenon. Mass shooters commit mass shootings first and foremost because they have heard and read about other mass shootings, have become deeply impressed by the cultural and social and political impact of such events, the fear and grief and anger they inspire, the iconic and symbolic nature of the killings, the manifestos and disaffection and claims and identities of the killers, and the deep, universally-acknowledged sense of meaningfulness about all the above, and so have decided to imitate them. The most directly impactful thing I, and probably most of you, can do to prevent mass shootings is to ignore them unless you are directly or indirectly affected by them. Even then, it is quite clear to me that the mass-media and political circus around such events deeply harms the actual victims of shootings, preventing them from grieving and moving forward by cynically channeling their grief into the news cycle. I have no desire to participate in any of the above, however remotely.

Nonetheless, in the current mass media landscape, such events as these are supposed to lead to conversations and policy debates about "gun control" and "gun violence." These conversations now commonly involve direct accusations of opponents being responsible for murder and the death of children, and lead, in practice, mostly to an increase in the generally violent valence of American society. 

Despite the above cautions, probably for the only time, is my own contribution to this discourse. It will not be repeated.

I should perhaps repeat at the outset that I do not own a gun, have no desire to own a gun, and in fact possess a fairly strong personal aversion to firearms, which was perhaps inherited from my maternal grandfather, who despite owning a firearm as a practical necessity (in his career as a cattle farmer), had a strong aversion to guns and avoided using them as much as possible.

City of Valleys

City of Valleys

I want to write something about the place where I was born.

Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama, but it is hard for me to think of it as a city at all. Here is a definition of a city: a place where the signs and efforts of human habitation have overwhelmed and defined the landscape. This is not what I feel when I am in Birmingham.

The people who built Birmingham were businessmen. Far from what was then considered civilization, it was discovered that the mountains contained iron ore. Railroads were built, and certain industrialists succeeded in getting them to intersect here, instead of somewhere else; and with an odd but characteristic mixture of simplicity and grand aspiration, they decided to name this conjunction for the greatest industrial city of the contemporary world.

Beginning as an aspirational Birmingham, England, it gradually transitioned into an aspirational Pittsburgh, "the Steel City of the South." Now, the steel furnaces, mills, and factories that once darkened the sky have disappeared so entirely that it is difficult to believe they were ever there; and Birmingham has passed to presenting itself as an aspirational Atlanta.

All these urban and civilizational trappings sit lightly on Birmingham. When I am there, as I was recently, it is not these things of which I think.

The End of the Armistice

[A new concept: after years of reading G.K. Chesterton's newspaper columns, I have really come to like the format. There is something interesting about seeing an essayist with a broad variety of interests comment in real time on things as they come up, whether general events or politics or religion or literature or life. This is not true of most modern newspaper columns, which are short and narrowly focused on partisan politics. With this in mind, I have set myself the task of writing a weekly "column" in which I comment on whatever the hell I want, with very little editing, and while limiting myself in length (c. 2000-3000 words) and complexity. I make no claims whatsoever that these "essays" will be even a hundredth as interesting as Chesterton's.]

The End of the Armistice

Prices are high, cost of living through the roof, inflation peaking, workers desperate for steady employment and higher wages, businesses desperate for labor, productivity down, resignations endemic, corporate profits through the roof, traditional sectors of the economy being hollowed out and replaced by new, creative forms of gambling and get-rich-quick schemes, reports of new, localized but increasingly apocalyptic conflicts appear daily on the news, there are rumblings of labor strikes and even revolution, and many people seem to find it impossible to do the most basic things.

What year is it? 1920.

At the beginning of the event known colloquially as "the Pandemic" (much as people in 1920 spoke colloquially of "the War"), I made a few observations and predictions which I have had no cause to retract:

1) That the Pandemic was the most significant global event since the World Wars, precisely because it was an event affected almost everyone, in every stratum of society throughout the world, immediately and extremely.

2) That in predicting how society and individuals would respond and react to the Pandemic, we should look to the World Wars.

3) That therefore the period after the Pandemic, like the periods after both Wars, would be marked by significant societal and political and international instability.

4) In particular, I believed that the immediate impact of Pandemic conditions would lead to an increase in stress and stress-related behaviors, a sense of personal and global instability a la "anything can happen," and therefore to simultaneous and staggered increases in both extreme risk-averse behavior and extreme risk-prone behavior. That is, faced with the knowledge that Events with extreme personal and global effects can happen apart from normal, societally- and intellectually-approved calculations and systems, people would spend a significant period of time oscillating between an irrational desire to flee from all dangers, and an equally irrational desire to risk anything and everything since they're probably doomed anyway. And the result of both of these impulses would be social and political instability.