Solomon on the Benedict Option
So, Christians, either you marinate in Rod's BO, or you have no future. Accept Rod, the author of the "How the World Wronged Rod Dreher" series, as your Highmost Patriarch, or the meanies on Twitter will tweet at you so often that you'll be forced to buy a cupcake from a gay person. Or something even more horrifying. Deeply inhale his BO, the BO of Truth! Only Rod's BO will repel the gays and liberal Christians enough to allow the establishment of Rod's long-prophesied New Jonestown... sorry, New Jerusalem, in which Rod will never get picked on again, and will forever be able to make fun of his family and the rubes in his hometown without being called on it (oh, and also where no one will ever mention the name "Harrison Brace", either).
Got it.
On a related note, people are complaining about his use of "apocalypse", pointing out - quite rightly - that if he has to continually explain and redefine a common word for his own uses, maybe he should just say it in a way people understand. Similarly, he should really, really coming up with a better acronym for his project than "BO". At that moment, I literally couldn't get through typing that sentence without an outburst of laughter. There has to be something else in "After Virtue" that will make him feel sufficiently philosophical. It'll give him a chance to actually read the rest of the book other than just the last page.
Harrison Brace showed up on the blog here about a year ago by the way.
This is a key point: "...if he has to continually explain and redefine a common word for his own uses, maybe he should just say it in a way people understand." Yes. Writing is supposed to be a form of communication after all, and, in my humble opinion, it can be done even in the context of 21st Century content provision. If many people continually misunderstand you then maybe you're doing it wrong.
I love "apocalypses". The best part is the commentary and analysis afterward.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/is-christianity-dying-from-boredom/
ReplyDeleteSpoiled brats whining about "boring Christianity". Perhaps a few years of worshipping in secret in Soviet Russia, risking being sent to Siberian camps for your faith might remind them just how blessed we are to have our freedoms to worship. I wonder how the saints that spent their time worshipping in the catacombs beneath Rome would consider such drivel.
Elitist crap. The whining of spoiled brats.
Wisdom indeed. Solomon's observation on Dreher redefining a common word reminded me of this:
ReplyDelete“This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
I'd say that fits Our Hero.
I think the playing field here is starting to take discernible shape. Getting religious and other intellectual naifs - the cooing courtiers in The Emperor's New Clothes - to take it seriously enough to talk about (and the Indiana RFRA episode proved providential to that end) was Step One.
ReplyDeleteThis is why, I think, Dreher has so incongruously been pushing the not-yet BO book even as the Dante book has yet to sell: now he's trending with the BO in a way he didn't and won't with Dante, crucial to locking in a BO contract.
But I'm not convinced Dreher is really a True Believer in the BO himself, only a True Believer in the crucial necessity of selling books about the BO.
His crowdsourcing efforts (imagine "Let's write a book about Christianity, open-ended gang, what would all of you like to see in it?") sugesst to me he understand very well he has an impossible to resolve chimera on his hand, hence Step Two: identify and cultivate the paranoids and dilettantes who will actually buy a BO book.
So, Step One: create the illusion of a Trending Big Idea, not matter how dry-rotten or otherwise hollow it might actually be conceptually, in order to land a book contract.
Step Two, like reducing a stock or gravy, boil down an audience mentally incapable enough to actually exchange hard-earned money for it.
Step Three, remain the 21st Century digital-consumerist playboy he always has been and buy oysters and wine with the proceeds.
Meanwhile, Step Real World: Pik's Murray Option.
Oh, this just gets richer.
ReplyDeleteHaving been saved by Dante from depression and mono, where do you now turn for a back door to escape the rat hole of personal responsibility if the terriers start closing in on your half-assed thinking on the BO? Demonic possession? Um, maybe a bit much, and the lingering stigma might harsh other opportunities.
Why, of course. You disclose that latent autistic-spectrum tendencies are just now coincidentally beginning to manifest themselves more acutely in your person.
Awww?!?! Who could be so cruel as to criticize someone with a Medical Condition, particularly, unlike your run of the mill Stage IV pancreatic cancer, a latent one, with tendencies, that manifest themselves, sometimes acutely? You? You cold, heartless demon, you. I'll bet you just try to hit puppies crossing the street, too. Unlike you, we True Believers understand completely why Rod's Benedict Option doesn't sound real-worldly. Many of us suffer from tose same latent, equivocally manifesting tendendies. Plus everyone knows that Aspies and other autistics are very often geniuses. So this just confirms that about Rod, you haters.
Full disclosure: for any who might find my writing style brusque, emotive, didactic, or anything at all other than the best possible way it might be received in all circumstances, I should admit right now that I myself am just now beginning to detect that I suffer from Dolenz-Clarksville Syndrome, among its other latent horrors being an acutely manifesting tendency among simians to frequently miss trains.
Hey, it could be worse, Keith. I have a friend named Joe. He has Hooterville-Bugtussle Syndrome. It always leaves him movin' kinda slow and spending a lot of time on the front porch in a rocking chair. Terrible...absolutely terrible to be afflicted in such a way.
DeleteWorse? Compared to my constantly and, I might add, cruelly being mistaken for an asshole by people who have no idea I suffer from a medical condition - and, of course, how could they? - HBS sounds like a veritable vacation.
DeleteSo ... we should read how Dante "cured" someone with "latent autistic-spectrum tendencies" in combination with the Barr-Epstein virus, and who had peculiar I-made-home-and-family-an-idol-but-my-family-didn't-like-me-for-who-I-am issues.
DeleteAnd from that, we are to learn how Dante will save our own lives? Really?
Right, Pik. It's universal. It's all connected. And if it doesn't work for you, you did it wrong. But there still might be hope for you in the next book.
DeleteHey, if the odious Uncle Chuckie is giving it rave reviews, it must have some sort of utility. Maybe in a pinch it could serve as a paddle should a recalcitrant sub tumble unexpectedly into one's backyard pit.
DeleteAt last: what the Benedict Option really is: taking a vacation in an Italian hill town with a hairy gentleman of Italian descent:
ReplyDeleteSordello says:
May 15, 2015 at 4:11 pm
“I think you need a vacation. Flights to Europe are cheap and the dollar is strong – maybe VRBO a house in an Italian hill town?”
Yes, perhaps with a hairy gentleman of Italian descent. Which sounds worse than it is.
[NFR: Readers, I am going to Siena and Lyon with Sordello in July. -- RD]
By the way, readers, Rod's testosterone level is fine.
I did not know that. Now I do.
Testosterone level: check.
Hairy gentleman of Italian descent: check.
BOCom, we are go for launch.
This whole comments section is a gold mine, including the seals' finally connecting the dots between the BO and Dreher's version to the real world.
If Dreher's self-diagnosis was intended as bait for flattery, mission accomplished.
DeleteHere's my fave:
Rod, you sound like you have the mind of a writer [smiley] . In a weird sort of way, your blog posts often remind me of Norwegion writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. Both of you struggle to find purity and solitude as modern day writers.
Oh but of course. Dreher struggles with "purity" as a "modern day writer". Just like Knausgard.
And then we have this paean to the Brave Sir Rod from commenter Mark:
Kudos for your bravery in opening up in such a personal way. It explains a lot—since I started reading your blog, I have marveled at (1) how much you obviously read every day, and (2) how much you actually write every day. So much more than any other blogger that I know of; and now it makes more sense.
Courage! Good thing Mark put that flattery in there so as to get the comment through the filter, because he then makes the uncomfortable connection you noted, Keith (emphasis added):
But I have to ask this, perhaps as the devil’s advocate. Is it possible that this aspect of your inner life is also partially behind your advocacy of the Benedict Option? .... As far as I can tell, Jesus called upon his followers to go forth and engage with the world, not withdraw from it, even in times of persecution—turning the other cheek and all that. We are supposed to be busy loving our neighbors, who are essentially defined as those as far removed from us as possible in society. How does something so fundamental become reconciled with the Benedict Option? And perhaps your personal inclination to live “not in the real world”?
Don't worry, Mark. Neither one is real, so there's no connection there.
I'm sorry, but this is seriously weird.
DeleteRod Dreher, possibly the single most homosexuality-obsessed human being who has ever lived, is going on (another) trip to southern France and northern Italy with another guy? He did this as "research" for his Dante book - gallivanting around southern Europe and eating aphrodisiacs with his male buddies. Seems as though his "I want to be alone" pose doesn't apply when it comes to intimate vacations with other men.
How does Mrs. Dreher feel about this? Her husband, who can't stop writing about the gays (in occasionally lovingly pornographic detail), is going on yet another European vacation with another man in order to decompress from the crushing strain of life with her and their kids in exurban Baton Rouge. Every relationship looks different to the people inside it, but from the outside, the alarm bells are sounding loud and clear.
Wow.
That's the way I convince people of how many books I read every day, Pik (I usually knock out 6 - 8):
Delete(1) Carefully pose the book in good lighting
(2) Carefully pose a "reader" prop like dark, thick-rimmed glasses atop the book. I've found from careful experimentation that alternatives like a lottery ticket, a socket wrench, or a can of tuna fish won't work.
(3) Take a picture of the composed tableau with your cell phone. This establishes that you (A) read with the glasses (why the tuna fish, etc., won't work) (B) the book in question. As we all know, pictures don't lie.
(4) Post the proof on the internet, then repeat as needed.
More seriously, what is Dreher's true utility to mankind? He's the canary in the human coal mine, and, as such, bears constant monitoring: what is the current status of human intelligence and susceptibility to suggestion and emotional manipulation?
BOCon 4, I'm afraid.
Dreher's goozlepipe is due for a stuffing. That's why he needs to go to Italy with Sordello. How either Julie or Casella stand for this, I don't know.
ReplyDelete