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[The post below was first published in 2007 on the original AWOL Civilization blog. It should be mentioned that Scruton passed away in 2020.]
It is unusual in our day to find a philosophical work that is profound, erudite, and oblivious to current intellectual fashion. I have just finished reading such a work: An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, by Roger Scruton. First published in 1998, it is a thoughtful attempt to explain the demise of Western culture. Scruton takes on all the familiar antagonists: deconstructionism, contemporary art, the youth culture, and much more. They scatter in disarray before his mighty pen. For example, discussing the role of artists in contemporary society: "Art is no longer a reflection on human life but a mechanism for excluding it." As for the more vulgar varieties of pop music: ”We witness a reversal of the old order of performance. Instead of the performer being the means to present the music, which exists independently in the tradition of song, the music has become the means to present the performer...it has a tendency to lose all musical character. For music, properly constructed, has a life of its own, and is always more interesting than the person who performs it.” I particularly enjoyed his debunking of deconstructionism, the best such effort I have seen. Scruton traces the development of this exaltation of nothingness, showing how it is intimately connected with the culture of repudiation, that phony pose of our self-styled intellectuals who claim to be in a permanent state of rebellion against the authorities. He shows how deconstruction became a quasi-theological underpinning of the culture of repudiation, enabling people to believe that they are in the opposition, even as they are being swept up by the dominant wave: “The subversive intention in no way forbids deconstruction from becoming an orthodoxy, the pillar of a new establishment, and the badge of conformity that the literary apparatchik must now wear. But in this it is no different from other subversive doctrines: Marxism, for example, Leninism, and Maoism. Just as pop is rapidly becoming the official culture of the post-modern State, so is the culture of repudiation becoming the official culture of the post-modern university.” Scruton delves into a thorough analysis of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, tracing the main lines of thought through the 19th century to Modernism, Post-Modernism, and finally the morbid state of collapse in which we now find ourselves. He presents several interesting hypotheses, including the notion that art, in its post-Enlightenment sense, stepped in to fill the void left by the collapse of religion as a guiding force in the West. Explore these fascinating insights when you read the book in its entirety.
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“It is now impossible, and has been impossible for over fifty years, for anyone to make a building which is beautiful or even agreeable. Whatever may be the reason for it, this is simply an historical fact; like the impossibility of travelling abroad nowadays without a passport, or the fact that no one could make a television set in the twelfth century. No one likes to look at a modern building, let alone live or work in it, and hardly anyone even pretends nowadays that they do like to.”
—David Stove, circa 1985 There is great anticipation in the land, that the incoming Trump administration will set aright the capsizing ship of state. I examined this topic in my post of 12/9/24; now I would like to expand the discussion beyond the boundaries of the merely governmental.
There is a tendency among the forces of the Right to be fixated on the political realm, particularly the Executive branch of the Federal government, as the source of salvation. I have no doubt that this domain is quite important, but it does not have primacy. The Left understands this full well. They know that fundamental change, including in the political sphere, is the end result of cultural shifts. Remember the “long march through the institutions”? That was the Left’s gradual, patient, decades-long subversion of the culture. And it worked. Let us recall the domains in which the Left overthrew the existing structures, and ousted the last vestiges of sanity: criminal justice; primary/secondary education; art; movies; academia; medical; economy/finance; race relations; to name just a few. The Obama/Biden regime is the logical outcome of this process. It could hardly be otherwise. Can it now be overturned and expunged by a change of president and other high-level government personnel? I submit that it cannot. To be sure, many emergency fixes can be made. I do not wish to downplay their importance. I will be the first to applaud if, for example, all illegal aliens are deported from the country. This is essential to national survival. It is unrealistic, however, to expect that Trump and his associates are the people who can accomplish the required deep cleaning. They are liberals (in the classic sense) who have been “mugged by reality”; who are horrified at the excesses of the Left. They can apply the emergency fixes, but they are not equipped philosophically to lead us into the promised land. That work will remain to be accomplished by others. As a case study, consider Elon Musk. His support for Donald Trump, and his purchase and decensoring of Twitter, were laudable actions. But if he were a true cultural leader and visionary, he would go much further. He would confess that Tesla is a monstrous grift based on one of the biggest lies in the Left’s pantheon of big lies: the Global Warming/Green Energy myth. Musk would then convert the Tesla operation to the production of simple, $10K internal-combustion cars, sell the company, and use the funds to set up a movie studio that is bigger than all of Hollywood combined. The first film to be produced would be a Jason Bourne sequel, this time with the CIA plotting a coup d’état against a conservative U.S. president. Next step for Musk: Become the leading benefactor at the top five art museums in the country. Use that position of power to clean out the “contemporary” filth, replace curators and executives as necessary, and restore American art to its former elevated status. MAGA: Make Art Great Again. Now back to reality: Let us not live under the illusion that this monumental task can be delegated to one individual, namely Mr. Trump, and that’s that. The responsibility for cleaning out the rot has devolved upon each of us, every man in his respective domain. We must overcome, however, the propensity of our side to non-involvement in such affairs. Folks on the Right tend to be engaged in productive economic pursuits, as well as family, religion, and other “normal” activities. They are not, by nature, political animals. The Left has a huge advantage in this area, having armies of people whose religion is Wokeism, and who are willing to devote their lives to the cause. The Right builds, the Left tears down. An ancient template. When institutions are conquered by the Left, they become platforms to pillage and ruin what came before. Educational institutions become a tool to destroy education. Artistic institutions destroy art. And so on. Now it is time for us to do some destruction of our own—creative destruction, to return those institutions to their true roles. We need smart and preferably young people to attain key positions in education, the arts, and other areas in which opinions are formed and culture is determined. Ideally, the big guns like Musk could jump-start this process. When this is in place, we can speak truth to power, and solve the dilemmas plaguing our society. In my recent post Intellectual Decay, Bitcoin Edition (11/23/24), I discussed the problem of subjective value, first as applied to money, and then to art and culture in general. I examined this issue in depth in an article I wrote in 2007 for American Thinker, entitled “Speaking Truth to Art.” I invite you to read the piece, as relevant now as it was then.
Bitcoin is again capturing headlines, due to its recent dramatic surge in price, and to the notable personalities and institutions that have hitched their wagon to the crypto train.
Who invented it, and why, are questions open to debate. What seems incontrovertible, however, is that Bitcoin is a massive speculative bubble, a latter-day tulip mania, a Ponzi scheme that requires ever-increasing infusions of new cash. This need is so great that the bagholder of last resort may very well be that endless fount of liquidity, the U.S. government itself. Witness the declarations of President-elect Donald Trump and others indicating the possibility of purchases by the Treasury. Moreover, it appears that enormous sums are already being channeled from Bitcoin into government bonds, via “Tether.” Does anyone still claim that Bitcoin is a form of money? In the heady early days, many naive Libertarian types succumbed to the hype, proudly announcing a “digital gold,” a ticket to financial freedom, beyond the control of rapacious governments and central banks. Although most of the major players currently are big-money types who cynically (and now openly) manipulate the suckers, one can still find die-hard coiners of the old school. In a recent debate, Peter Schiff went head-to-head with Robert Breedlove, a youngish defender of the faith. Schiff easily demonstrated that Bitcoin is in reality “nothing,” and has none of the key characteristics of true money. The one exchange between the two men that stuck in my mind was related to the notion that a good money must have value. Both debaters were in agreement on this point. Schiff, however, emphasized that the object used as money must have a value apart from and prior to its use as a monetary instrument. Naturally, gold fulfills this requirement (and all others); Bitcoin does not, because it has no existence, so you can’t do anything with it, other than buy and sell it. It has a price, but it has no value. The response of the crypto advocate: “value is subjective.” In other words, it has value because we say it does. No need for any practical application in the physical world—that’s dinosaur thinking. Subjective value, forsooth! Bitcoin is a widely-touted alternative to fiat currency. A delicious irony presents itself: Does this "subjective" business not sound suspiciously like the basis of the fiat dollar, indeed of all fiat currencies? Here, take this piece of paper with a number printed on it, backed by nothing, but don't worry, the government says it has value. Somewhat reminiscent of modern art, is it not? A silly person tapes a banana to the wall and calls it art. You say: Wait a minute, it doesn't fulfill any of the requirements of art. Ahh, my friend, don't you fret, it's all subjective. Come to think of it, there are countless examples of collapse along these lines, where reality and quality go out the window. Welcome to the modern world. Ersatz everywhere you look. I wonder just how far the level of intellect had to decay, in order to reach this cerebral wasteland devoid of logic and rational thought. How far did the decay need to progress before huge numbers of otherwise bright and educated people signed up for the digital utopia? They can already live most of their life on line: shopping, social interaction, entertainment, even the carnal pleasures. Why not have money exclusively on line as well? The digitization is already well advanced, so let’s push it just a bit further, and erase any remaining link with “meatspace.” Instead of Bitcoin, they should have named it Smartcoin. Everything else, from cars to refrigerators, is becoming smart; in other words, subject to endless complication and breakdown. The transition from crypto currency to central bank digital currency (CBDC) is obvious at this point. Put it in the basket with lockdowns, social media censorship, unrealized capital gains, elimination of cash, destruction of small business—all paving the way for the digital gulag. You say you want to deal with real people using real money? Hahahahaha….. |
Dystopian literatureWelcome to the blog! While you're here, check out the six dystopian novels by Gary Wolf. His latest is The Cubist Supremacy. 
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