Benedict Option Denialism is like Climate Change Denialism
Confusing the phenomenon of El Niño for climate change (to be charitable, because he spends most of his time online he's not particularly knowledgeable about the real world)
We just came off a month of record-breaking heat and rainfall in the US, which is the kind of thing scientists predicted would happen as the planet warms
Rod Dreher then goes on to construct a rather random mashup of denialisms in order to suggest, in reverse application, that if one denies his Benedict Option is needed, one is remarkably like the cretinous Climate Change Denier (who in turn, of course, is like the savage and barbaric Holocaust Denier).
When several commenters question the validity of these associations, Dreher lays down St. Rod's Rule of Benedict Option Political Correctness:
Look, I’m not going to let this thread turn into a climate change argument. I brought up the global warming article to draw an analogy with the Benedict Option concept. If global warming turns out to be not true, that doesn’t obviate the Benedict Option, which is about something else...
But, wait, Slick: you linked the BO to climate change to give it the gravitas currently enjoyed by climate change. So any loss of credibility climate change may suffer directly vitiates the artificial link you're trying to construct here, in turn draining the credibility you're trying to pump from climate change over to your Benedict Option.
Are all BOppers as patently intellectually dishonest as you, High BOpper?
Anybody who wants to turn this thread into an argument about global warming per se, I’m not going to post your comment, no matter which side you take, and no matter how minor a part of your overall comment it is. I don’t have time to edit that part out. You have been warned.
Well, that's one way to save the village.
Rod's TAC blogging colleague Noah Millman asked
So I have to ask: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be to stop pursuing outrage porn? And if it isn’t – why isn’t it?
and, for his trouble, found his post unpublished down the memory hole.
Those of us not yet within the Benedict Option's Soviet sphere are thus obligated to ask in turn: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be Liberal Political Correctness and, in particular, Liberal Political Correctness with respect to Climate Change Denialism and other Liberal apostasies? And if it is - why is it?
You have been warned, Mark Steyn.
Dreher's concerned about global warming, but not enough to stop flying to France twice a year for gay, sausage-eating romps with swarthy European mystery men. Sort of like how's he concerned that his kids will be contaminated by modernity, but not enough to stop rocking out to the feral, sexually-potent Rolling Stones - and not enough, as Noah Millman points out, to stop producing and consuming "outrage porn" on the internet.
ReplyDeleteBingo.
DeleteWRT said Rolling Stones tune: I listen to rock & roll with my kids, but I'd never say "Hey, guys--this is real snarling, feral male sexual potency, ain't it!" First of all, that would make me the biggest nerd-dad on the block. Secondly, I wouldn't want to risk making Mick Jagger and company into role-models by glorification of their lyrical content.
Sam M says:
DeleteJuly 9, 2015 at 2:47 pm
PS:
[Dreher]“The scope of the problem is so vast and complex that I feel that doing anything to change my own life to mitigate the oncoming disaster is pointless”
Well, this is where policy comes into play, no? If you value a national defense, you will at first note that just having people volunteer money won’t work because of the free-rider problem. So you grit your teeth and support legislation that will use the state’s monopoly on violence to FORCE people to pay for an army. TO jail them if they don’t pay. Or just go take the money from them.
Similarly, deciding not to fly to France for vacation, on your own, would do very little. But supporting a gargantuan tax on jet fuel would make trips to France way more expensive for everyone, and LOTS of people would decide not to go to France. Or drive their cars so much.
So huge confiscatory taxes and outright bans can generate the collective action you seem to desire on this issue.
Would you support such policies?
If you want to see the logical conclusion of the BOp, skim through the comments on that Dreher post. It's a modern day online Tower of Babel -- the comments are generally as incomprehensible as the post itself, with everyone talking past one another. And virtually all meet the working definition of the BOp by its creator at the end of that post (emphasis added):
ReplyDeleteThe Benedict Option is, among other things, an invitation to Christians to consider the extent to which their own spirituality, their own thought, their own way of life, is built on a disharmony with things As They Really Are, and to recover an older, more authentically Christian vision — and, in turn, build “monasteries” (I’m speaking figuratively here) as bulwarks within which that vision can be grasped in the chaos and cultural night that has overtaken us.
"Among other things", "things As They Really Are", and figurative "monasteries". What can be clearer? Don't you get it?
I think after the initial round of excitement among the various sites over having something catchy called "The Benedict Option" to discuss that they'll start to realize with greater an lesser creeping discomfort that they've bought into a middle-aged LSU sophomore and his Introduction to Western Civilization notes. A middle-aged LSU sophomore and his Introduction to Western Civilization notes circa 2 AM or so with a joint smoldering in the ashtray.
DeleteI think that Gabriel Sanchez guy actually gets it fully, but he's quite too polite to actually come out and say so directly.
I'll go out on a limb and, for the reasons given in your comment, Pik, tag the self-interview post and this drooling rambler that followed it as the point the BO jumped the shark. From the bubble boy narcissism to the Bass-o-matic thinking to the final circling of the wagons, they have it all.
DeleteReader "Maxine" takes Dreher to the woodshed on the "Critics of the Benedict Option Thread," correctly observing that being an ambiguously gay weirdo who traffics obsessively in outrage porn pertaining to homosexuality is, shall we say, not a very strong witness for Christianity:
ReplyDelete[NFR: I’m pretty sure I did answer Noah’s questions. — RD]
Nope. No ya didn’t.
Noah Millman concluded his now-deleted post with this:
“[gives examples of Dreherbait that Rod calls ‘outrageous’] . . . But isn’t the collection of such stories, well, isn’t it kind of obsessing over precisely the parts of our culture that the whole point of the Benedict Option is to turn away from, in favor of a focus on one’s own community, and its spiritual development?
So I have to ask: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be to stop pursuing outrage porn? And if it isn’t – why isn’t it?”
So Millman and I and I’m sure many others want to know: gonna drop the collection and dissemination, under the guise of “cultural criticism,” of outrage porn? If not, why not? Because it provides such a huge portion of your blog content?
Extra credit: Re: the “Elder Zosima option” — would the Elder, or any Orthodox elder, or for that matter does your own parish priest, consider blogging outrage porn and pouring forth thousands of words a day over it good work for the sake of Christian culture, your own parish community (your main partners, presumably, in BenOpting), and the larger Church?
You frequently reply to such queries, “I just don’t understand why people read a blog they don’t like,” implying that you’re above such hate-reading. That’s not an acceptable answer to any part of these questions. This whole business of Dreherbait outrage porn belies that answer (which is only an avoidance tactic, anyway), because if you didn’t read stuff you hate, and then, moreover, spend hours a day blogging about it, you’d lose half your blog content.
Boy, Maxine asks incisive questions. And the girl can write!!!
Delete