Huh?
In today's output, Dreher offers an early peek into the Benedict Option book, using his standby mechanism of a quote from an alleged reader:
Millenials are like the Bynars from one of the early episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation. They are so merged in with their technology that one does not know where the human begins or ends and where the technology is. Their memories, both short and long term, have been altered. They have no idea of what community is because in the real world it does not exist. And changing genders is part of high tech. Shape shifting is part of this generation. Look at the popular media. If you don't like who you are, you can change yourself by being a super hero, or zombie, or become something else. So, in a way it is not surprising that this is happening. Alot of the changes in society are here because of technology and how it has become a master over us.
To which Dreher adds this analysis (emphasis added):
I think this is true. The Technology chapter of The Benedict Option explores this insight.
He thinks what is true? That "alot of the changes in society are here because of technology and how it has become a master over us", say, as opposed to our human nature that has persisted since the Fall? Or is he agreeing that millennials "are so merged in with their technology" that they don't know "where the human begins or ends and where the technology is"? If so, someone's been hiding bad sci-fi inside their MacIntyre so the Mrs. doesn't yell at him to get off his duff.
Anyhow, if you can figure out what this is about, please enlighten. To the extent it makes any sense (not much), it's patently false. In any case, the "Technology chapter" ought to be a doozy.
I can sort of understand how someone who connects with the world almost exclusively through, not merely "technology" - think of the quaintly gnashing gears of Fritz Lang's Metropolis - but of its even more communally eviscerating, next order of abstraction derivative "cyberspatiology" and someone who skillfully uses both to almost certainly sockpuppet his own blogging as both anonymous source and anonymous commenter would find such a statement true.
ReplyDeleteDreher's are the conclusions of a cannibal lunching on clown and finding the taste funny.
If you think Dreher's increasingly hysterical tone, pounding pot with stick to capitalize on this year's U. S. election/Brexit mood while delivering his sky is falling, the BO is your only shelter message has peaked, there's still probably still plenty of time for the whole family to reserve a nice spot in a lovely torchlight parade just as the leaves are turning.
ReplyDeleteA trip to a super double secret probation, Davos-style Maui conference disclosed after the fact is just the thing to drive the truest of the true believers to self-sort themselves from the merely waffling true believers. Do I believe in Rod and the BO enough to receive grains of information and truth about this sacred event? Why yes, yes I do. Maybe if I email Rod he will dispense some to me. They're not for just anyone, you know.
Maui. That's where all the true BO believers would naturally assemble to pray for guidance in hunkering down to escape the Dark Ages of a Godless culture encroaching upon them. Why, one can easily visualize Christ Himself strapping his favorite board to a seaworthy donkey with the hope of catching a few gnarly big ones between sermons. Cowabunga, Dude!
In short, this lead up to the release of the sacred BO text is the view we all missed with Jim Jones. What fun was that? Just meat beginning to turn in the jungle. This time it's so much better. You are there, now, while the sausage is being made. This is exactly how you build cult reverence for an elect prophet of the True Belief.
Let me see if I can be more succinct. Dreher doesn't actually do anything for Christians, Christian anxiety, or, in particular, Christian liberty.
ReplyDeleteInstead, Dreher is to Christians, Christian anxiety, and Christian liberty what Facebook is to your data: the vendor who merchandizes it as product.
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Only tangentially related, if you ever wonder why Dreher feels so at home with his master, TAC publisher Wick Allison, here's Allison yesterday on his own blog using his own bully pulpit to publicly beat up on some lower level Dallas employee:
*Of course* Jill Jordan is involved. Bless her heart as she waits for that retirement check, she can't help making bad decisions. It's what she has done her entire career. Few people have failed more successfully at everything they have touched than Jill Jordan. Just be thankful that this time it was only a street corner. She's capable of far more damage than that. The management of the Trinity watershed was her domain. We're fortunate there's anything left of the Trinity at all.
The funniest thing of all? Nowadays, the Allison money to be made is on the side of opposing that Trinity thing he's referring to, so naturally Allison has his mouthpieces there constantly talking it down. A dozen years ago or back when it was first being proposed, the money to be made was on the other side, as was Allison.
Allison and his catamite Dreher are two perfectly adaptable peas in the same pod when it comes to exploiting their respective spheres of activity.
Along those lines, Dreher himself has raised a more militant facade over recent days. Regarding churches allegedly (i.e., from an anonymous source) failing to join someone else's fight on the trans bathroom issue, Dreher rattles his sword (emphasis in original!):
DeleteSomeone with the campaign told me that one of their members approached 120 individual churches asking them to join their effort. Only seven said yes. Seven churches out of 120. I asked why so few. The answer? “They’re afraid to be seen as unloving.”
Let me tell it to you straight: there is no place for that kind of cowardice in this fight. None. The battle is here, and it is now, and there are ordinary people who never sought a fight, but the fight came to them. You spend any time in the presence of these people, and hear their stories, and come to understand what they are suffering for their faith (Barronelle wept when talking about the people who have threatened to burn her house down), and if you have a shred of decency or honor or courage within you, you will stand up with them.
Note the "you" will stand up with them. Rod will of course remain in the easy chair in So. La., when not at a super-secret conference in Maui or traveling Europe with a hairy male companion. But don't worry, he'll be right behind you in the fight, right down to the last Catholic.
But wait, there's more! Remember the many times that we've seen that the Benedict Option is "strategic withdrawal"? Well, yes, it's that, but it also now is such a big tent that it of course includes counterattacking -- at least it is when someone accuses it of not counterattacking. From today's output (emphasis added):
Goldman says that the only alternative is for Christians to counterattack. They have nothing to lose that won’t be taken from them anyway, so they might as well fight.
He also says that the Benedict Option is “impractical,” because, as he explains in the comments, he thinks it’s about going Hasidic. Um, no. If I had to live with Christian Hasidim, I would be the world’s worst at it. I’ll make sure my friend gets a copy of the galleys when they’re out. He’ll see that I’m up to something broader and more ambitious. Frankly, there is nothing un-Ben-Op about counterattacking.
Of course not. Where would he have gotten that idea?
But don't worry, he'll be right behind you in the fight, right down to the last Catholic.
ReplyDeleteI recently heard someone refer to Dreher as "the Mitt Romney of Christian conservatism".
"The Technology chapter." That certainly sounds like it'll have the breadth and depth to address issues of technology, religion, and culture. Yes indeedy.
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me, Rod referred to "the religion chapter" in his BenOp book recently. I'm still scratching my head over that one.
Isn't that like offering a "politics chapter" in a book about reforming Congress? A "recipes" chapter in a cookbook?
DreRod's little Church is in transition..The priest is leaving...Wonder what DreRod will do now ?
ReplyDelete