The Phlogistetheron Option
When your J-school degree turns out to be worth about as much as the 8-track player your daddy still keeps in the garage for sentimental reasons, you boldly turn to new reasons to live, namely, to become famous for nothing more than making up word couplings and then trying to get paid for writing as many more words about them as possible.
This, in a nutshell, is Rod Dreher's Benedict Option (™), or, as I like to think of it, the Phlogistetheron Option, a mystical, ever-evolving something-experience that will ignite the ether of our imaginations the more it is referred to and discussed by thoughtfully serious consumers of ignited ether.
Today, we learn a new, never before revealed aspect of Phlogistetheron:
The Benedict Option will be in part about fighting for reality against the Matrix.
Really? That should keep us busy for awhile, yes indeedy. Except, um, what can that possibly even mean? Everything. Nothing. Whatever Neo Dreher wants it to mean as he bends the bullets of examination and criticism around him and his Phlogistetheron cloud in slo-mo.
The Matrix was at best a bad Wachowski Brothers-waddling into mystical secular eschatology that only got worse with each reload. Is this how we are to approach living Christian lives? Through the eyes of insecure adolescents yearning for mystical super powers to use against an over-weening adult establishment?
This Phlogistetheron Option does remind me of a different movie, though, John Carpenter's The Thing: a shape-shifting mutant that, as soon as you think you grasp what it is, melts and flows and mutates into something entirely new and unrecognizable.
There, on that plate there. Is that really a ham sandwich? Or could it be Rod Dreher's Benedict Option (™), in a new disguise, preparing to spring and ignite the very ether of our imaginations?
Or could this simply be Dreher starting to promote his next book now that the greatest book on Dante ever is about to hit the shelves (and soon the discount tables)? Face it, he yabbered and yabbered for many a moon about Dante before any inkling of a book was mentioned on the blog. Now he is doing the same about the Benedict (Arnold) Option.
ReplyDeleteHe is less a social commenter than a disgruntled bookmonger these days.
As I pointed out here, Dreher isn't hiding anything, he's openly telling everyone he's making it up as he goes along:
Delete[NFR: All great questions ... but ones I am not prepared to answer. All of them I have to explore while working on the book. -- RD]
Dreher isn't elaborating a concept or theory of how Christians should respond to contemporary culture he has philosophized, he's campaigning as a polititian, floating trial balloons, holding focus groups, taking public commentary, doing market sampling all in an effort to determine the best message-product mix for the book buying market he thinks exists. He will then construct "the Benedict Option" for that optimized consumer demand. One can easily see him simultaneously teasing the religious liberty angle to those same ends, likely in tandem: what formulation will provoke both the gays and believers into buying and reading a book with that angle in it without being so logically preposterous as to leave both camps laughing at him.
This entire effort is only religiously flavored to meet consumer tastes, the way Tang is orange flavored. May not contain any real religion by volume.
When I read Dreher's stupidty, I am reminded of the song "Welcome back my Friends." It is by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VsifANR96s
ReplyDeleteJonathan Carpenter