I have three whole things this morning—all of them entertaining and guaranteed to make the long day wear along more enjoyably.
The First Thing
Marry Harrington is fierce as a thousand suns this morning. She’s over at UnHerd talking about Burning Man, and then on her Substack burning other things down on her own. It’s pretty great. On Substack, she is wonderfully sarcastic, especially about Matt Walsh:
But another pattern again seems to be converging on the idea that we don’t need a larger critique, and can just pick and choose from all the above to make the world a better place by shouting at women. Let’s call this approach Matt Walshism, after its most prominent and odious proponent. He’s not alone, though, and Matt Walshism isn’t even just a male thing: the internet is awash with young female influencers getting rich quick by donning low-cut tops and parroting talking-points from the bowels of the manosphere. And, to my disgust, ever more of the so-called “dissident right” has joined the party, seemingly abandoning humour, provocation, cultural or political critique, let alone or anything approaching policy, and instead retreated into the Matt Walshist safe space that is whining about women.
Here is me, applauding from the back of the room. Do better, is what I say. I was aghast a few months ago when a member of my own household who must have been binging on some brand of Matt Walshism YouTube channel tried to explain to me and his father that when a man gets married, he should try to protect his wife from his stress and shouldn’t talk about his work much, because work stress and home stress should be divided by an iron wall of something or other. It’s the godly thing to do, he splained. It’s what every modern young lady wants.
I responded rather poorly to this insane piece of advice, advising my offspring to find more and better accounts to listen to about all the most interesting and intractable problems of the day. The very idea that the wife should be “protected” from the anxieties and stresses of the husband is—well, really, what do those people think marriage is for? And what decade is it? I’m not about to arrange a marriage for him. How would I even do that? No, he’s going to have to find someone who exists currently, not from some long-ago era when all the assumptions and expectations were other than they are now.
Poor Shakshuka Girl—if that is what she is still being called—looks lonely and miserable. She needs someone to share her trials with, not be wrapped up in the warm blanket of frictionless self-comfort. She already has that, and, as Harrington so astutely points out, she should not be blamed as the cause of all our problems. She is, rather, the symptom:
Sure, there are plenty of pretty young female influencers parroting the liberal line about “finding myself”, dunking on marriage, or expressing revulsion at the prospect of caring for a toddler. I think they are wrong to do so, and may well come to regret it. But are we seriously saying that these women are the crux of the problem? That their opinions are so wildly influential that simply shaming them into silence would solve all the other issues? Sorry, but this is either deluded or - tacitly - an expression of despair. If your radicalism is laser-focused on scapegoating normie lib women, instead of mobilising against all the other issues that are bearing down on healthy family formation, or making modern life ever more expensive and unpleasant, what you are saying is that everything about the world is fine, except what women do.
I love that the solution to all the troubles of the day is shame. In the zero-sum game of social upheaval, the best thing to do is to denounce other people, especially the other sex:
Another reliable rule of thumb is that whenever a significant material upheaval impacts enough of a population, one of its cultural side-effects will be a big argument about men and women, that continues until some kind of consensus emerges about how best to live together under the new, changed conditions.
In the meantime, until there is a consensus, let’s keep play-acting roles and lifestyles that made sense a long time ago, but don’t anymore because none of those conditions exist, though, as more and more things catch on fire, they probably will reemerge before anyone is ready for them, and then we can go back to more “traditional” mores— as if people figuring out how to live and share their lives and muck along enmeshing their hearts together by love, virtue, respect, and honor is somehow not “traditional.”
The Second Thing
But back to Burning Man, Harrington wrote about it that
The “playa” where the event takes place has no shelter, no water, and no greenery. Nothing is left there between festivals, meaning all infrastructure a temporary, hauled in and assembled for the purpose. Depending on your actual bank balance, this means after the $575 ticket price you must buy or rent everything you need for an encampment, band together with friends, or at minimum raise the funds needed for membership in one of the annual larger pre-existing themed camps. You must pre-load with food, water and shelter. Plus you’ll have more fun if you also take trinkets and treats for barter, fun costumes to wear, drugs, and perhaps a bicycle to get around. All this is then hauled out onto the ring-fenced blank slate of a dry Nevada lake-bed, so festival-goers can enjoy a magical, week-long experience of life without buying or selling. In other words: all this gift-economy joy is enabled by participation in the regular cut-throat capitalist one. And enjoying it at all is predicated on having enough surplus resource in your life that you can afford to blow at least a few grand on contributing to a colossal, ephemeral simulacrum of no longer needing money at all. And if you can afford to set aside the chunk of change required to resource yourself for a week-long extreme-climate self-catering fancy dress party, chances are you aren’t living hand-to-mouth. It is, in other words, very much a Marie Antoinette toy farm.
And so did Nick a long time ago, and right sarcastically:
So it seems, then, that Burning Man is a lot more like the outside world (though “default world” is the perfect name for our knee-jerk law reliance) than Burners would ever admit. There are plenty of rules, they’re just unofficial: once you park your car, you’re expected to leave it parked. The rule doesn’t exist, but, you know, don’t break it. People have to be at Burning Man for “the right reasons” to be trusted. You have to hide your love of the visiting DJ in order to appear to be “interested…in…the spirit of Burning Man.” The only economy is a gift economy…except when the goods in question are actually valuable.
Again, the main point is not to stop and think about what it takes to build a functional society. Don’t do that. Just keep larping forever. Also, never ever ever figure out what time it is, which brings me to…
The Third Thing
The app formerly known as Twitter was aflame yesterday by a sort of advertising video effort by a ministry called Acts 29. I am trying really really hard not to be overly mean here, but watching it, I basically reenacted that funny sketch where some world leader rolls her eyes so hard she lands on the floor. Hang on, let me find it:
Ok, so with that off my mind, let us turn our attention to this invertivew which I can only describe as completely fatuous and also blithely and ridiculously unaware of the time of the day. I mean, it’s like they sort of know that some issue has been rocking the Christian world for like 30 years, but they, like Kamala Harris, couldn’t be bothered to pay attention very well, and so then, when it is now far too late and whole libraries have been written on the subject, they lazily cobble together the least interesting talking points that were dispatched years and years ago. Enjoy! I don’t know how to embed the video, so I beg you will click this link.
There have been some great takedowns this morning already, over on the X app. This one in particular is pretty funny. What is most important, of course, is not to laugh and then move on, but, for real, to do much much better. By that I mean, go deeper. Think about this more carefully and more reverently, and with a smidgeon of holy fear. Just using the acronym—l.g.b.t.q.i.a.+. should be mulled over for at least an afternoon. What do each of the letters mean? What happens when you, a Christian, join them together? What kind of larping is going on? What is being ignored? Who is being pushed into a corner through social shame? What should we really be ashamed of, or anxious about?
And then, from thence, every Christian who is only just realizing the chasm opening up at his or her feet, should ask (and be willing to accept the real, substantive, knowable answers) what does God think? What has he said about this already? How can I actually apply both the law and the gospel to this issue?
I got to the part in Isaiah today where God is so sarcastic about the idols the people at the time were making for themselves. He is both angry and pointedly bitter:
The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”
The dumb idol sits there and does nothing, and God rolls his eyes. And now, if you will excuse me, I must return to the futility of my life. Have a nice day!
I listened to the Mike Sullivan video, since he is operating about 10 miles north of me. The most positive outlook for his ministry would be that he's trying to do what the Reformed Presbyterian pastor in Syracuse did with Rosaria Butterfield back in the 1990s, where she was accepted into their home on a regular basis and came to know the Lord Jesus through their open hearts and their frank discussions of topics done in away that was compassionate but very orthodox in the Christian faith they presented and expressed.
Of course, the worst - and in the CRC right now, the most likely - outcome is to accept those who are LGBT etc on their terms, rather than asking them to come to God on his terms.
Been out of the loop for a few days serving women who are doing the hard work of family formation in the name of Jesus. Such a contrast to the "burners."