A safer world means a place where the bad guys are scared and the good guys aren't. Unfortunately, liberals in government do the opposite, enacting policies which empower the "demons" and making the good folks second guess themselves. They limit the freedom of the good guys in ways the bad guys don't care about.
On talk radio the other day, I heard a woman wisely recommend an alternative to the ridiculous "Gun Free Zone" signs you see in commercial buildings. Did she suggest that a sign be posted that reads "A lot of us carry guns here, so watch out?" No, she said the signs should read "This building is under surveillance." A good person doesn't care about surveillance because they are in the building to obtain products or services, to make a deposit, to do their job, etc. But a bad person fears getting caught for what they are about to do.
If I owned commercial property there is only one way I'd post those no guns allowed signs. That's if I had a full walk-through metal detector to go along with them. The idea that these signs are any kind of deterrent is a very dangerous one.
Defining bulls*** is a tricky task, but Pennycook and his team tried their best in the paper.
As an example, they gave the following 'pseudo-profound' statement: "Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty."
The paper says: "Although this statement may seem to convey some sort of potentially profound meaning, it is merely a collection of buzzwords put together randomly in a sentence that retains syntactic structure."
"Bulls***, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth."
If someone can find an example of a typical Rod Dreher idea salad post about his Benedict Option that deviates from the description given in this article, by all means give us a link.
As for the individuals browsing and consuming Dreher's Benedict Option salad bar themselves, given the findings of the article that is just one more reason we give thanks for a merciful God.
Today Dreher asks (via an alleged Muslim commenter):
... when you ask Muslim immigrants to integrate, what do you mean? Integrate into what?
Dreher has no answer -- other than this:
... I'm not sure how I would answer it. I've never thought about it before, and am embarrassed to realize that.
... I think when Europe asks them to integrate, it's asking them pretty much to quit being Muslim. When America does, I think it's more or less asking them, "Will you please not act in ways that make us feel afraid?"
I guess the only way one can think like this is because one thinks like this:
.... Post-Obergefell, to what extent should Christians remain engaged with and willing to defined the America we have? ....
.... I no longer hold the view that America is a nearly unambiguous force for good in the world. In fact, I think American culture is in many ways poisonous, and a force for evil....
.... I believe that there is a meaningful difference between being a good Christian and a good American ....
This is the premise of the Benedict Option. When one believes that the "Enlightenment project" has failed, then one cannot answer that simple question of "what does it mean to integrate" with the obvious answer that "to integrate" means to accept the founding ideas of the Nation:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....
Despotism awaits those who follow the path of the Benedict Option.
What
has come to
be known as the Benedict option seeks to answer this question.
According to this theory, Christians should retreat from the culture at
large, form their own communities where “neo-monasticism” is
practiced, which seems to be a selective retreat from the world,
where those participating are laymen and laywomen in every respect
except that they remain uninvolved in the culture, one could
even use the term quasi-monks. A good example of what these
communities would look like would be the Hasidic Jewish communities that
exist throughout the U.S.
As I, in my own life and discernment process, consider the monastic
life, I must say that this is a misrepresentation of what it means to be
a monk. A monk does not seek to retreat from the world
because he has some sort of ideological or practical disagreement
with it; he does so because he comes to the realization that everything
that is in and of the world is to him an impediment to
the radical union with God which he seeks. Thus, he gives up
everything, including the opportunity go hold a job and have a family
and children of his own, to own a home, to network with others,
to be able to make meaningful change in society, for the purpose of
pursuing only one thing, complete dedication to God. Yet, the
monk—though he retreats from the world—does not abandon the
world, because his great love, Christ, did not abandon the world.
Rather, having retreated from it, he prays for the salvation of the
world. Thus, he does not seek to forget the world, but to
serve it in a different manner.
before concluding
In regards of the Benedict option, imagine the disaster that would have happened had the early Christians chosen it. After all, if Western culture has in some important regards moved away from Christianity, how much farther from Christ was it during the first three centuries of Christian existence? Of course, the early Christians did not choose the Benedict option. They did not choose the Benedict option because they understood that they had a duty to God and a duty to their neighbor to spread the good news that Christ is Lord, that He came back from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion, and that those who believe in Him will have eternal life. And so do we. The correct Christian response to the current culture is not to retreat from it, it is to work zealously to convert it and bring it to the truth and love of Christ. If the Benedict option instructs us to act differently, its validity is questionable.
Of course, it's very possible that
Evangjeli gets the Benedict Option completely wrong, from two important standpoints.
First, the Benedict Option is an animagus in the process of being continually redefined by Rod Dreher even as I write this, so, like any week's upcoming Saturday Night Live production, the Benedict Option is in no way bound to be tomorrow what it was yesterday or today.
This is the Easter egg irony at its heart: what Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™is is optional.
Second, though and most importantly, as close followers of Rod Dreher and his Benedict Option have verified on numerous occasions, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ possesses a genetically programmed autonomic self defense* within the aforementioned Easter egg which prevents it from ever materializing as anything identical to an object of criticism.
So, sorry, Gjergji Evangjeli. By your very act of criticizing the Benedict Option you have almost certainly guaranteed that it will never admit to being what you understand it to be.
*In addition to these autonomic defenses preventing Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ from ever materializing within a locus of criticism, the Benedict Option Easter egg (BOEE) also contains within itself a process analogous to the enzyme reverse transcriptase which can be injected into any host it might encounter in passing.
Thus, if anything you're doing sounds decent, I must say, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ immediately transcribes itself within that activity, and that activity in turn immediately becomes an example of the Benedict Option.
Unless someone happens to criticize what you're doing; then: buh-bye!
I believe it is accurate to state that the so-called Benedict Option as promoted by Rod Dreher had its genesis from about the time of the Brendan Eich brouhaha -- at which time Dreher concluded that the culture was lost and it was time to carry out a "strategic withdrawal" from the culture at large. Keith summarized Dreher's moral cowardice here on EQE at the time, pointing out that even Dreher's good buddy Andrew Sullivan called Dreher a coward:
And the only way to distinguish yourself from these hateful factions [those who persecute gays] is to make a positive case for your position. That's always possible. From the very beginnings of our faith, Christians have made such a positive case, even as they were being thrown to the lions. And Rod won't do it because someone might say something mean at the office!
Sarah Palin agreed with Andrew Sullivan. In response to which Dreher doubled down, making an argument from anecdote by referring to religious conservatives in academia being afraid to disclose their own beliefs about same sex marriage without risking their career.
Hence the Benedict Option, because there just isn't room for Christian conservatives in the larger culture.
Fast forward to last week, specifically the inmates taking control of the asylums of the U of Missouri, Yale, Claremont McKenna, et al., following which Dreher exhorts academic authorities to show some backbone:
Why are you people so afraid? I don't understand.
and
Strike back, empire. and strike hard.
That's Our Hero: asking others to do something that he wouldn't dream of doing. Picking fights for others, just like good ol' Wimpy:
And fair warning to those about to embark on the Benedict Option -- you'll be on your own, as far as its creator is concerned.
We can lament the auto-destruction of the church and the academy, or we can do something about it. We can prepare for the disintegration, and form communities of people who do love the faith, and who do love the Great Tradition, and who have ceased to trust institutions and elites within them to transmit that love to the young. We must strengthen those that stand, and start new institutions where there are no others.
I believe it. It’s time to quit thinking about these things, folks, and to start doing something about them. Organize! Don’t wait to be saved! The displeasure of a football team just took down the president and chancellor of a major state university. And whining students who just wanted to talk about their pain compelled a distinguished scholar to apologize and beg forgiveness for defending free speech and open inquiry. If those aren’t signs of the times, what is?
Put down the beer, Bo, there's barricades to be a-stormin'.
It's not entirely clear to me how much of the doing Rod will be doing himself that Wick Allison is not already paying him to do, but then we live now in the days of leading from behind, right? If not in fact leading while remaining comfortably seated on our behinds. Otherwise, injury might ensue.
But wait!
What's this?
Our chimera has just sprouted a new and very different...turducken...let's call it, for want of a better immediate name:
Merci! Your comment about the Benedict Option reminds me that all people of good faith who are devoted to the Western tradition — Christians, certainly, but also Jewish, Muslim (I’m thinking about our frequent commenter here “Jones,” a believing Muslim, but also someone I count as an ally), and non-believers in the Allan Bloom mold — need to organize, and when possible or desirable, form institutions.
Well, that's certainly diverse, is it not? Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ will now include in its communion Christians, Jews, Muslims and "non-believers in the Allan Bloom mold" but, presumably, not non-believers not in the Allan Bloom mold, unless, well, they're people of good faith.
It sounds all quite academic, or at least primarily pitched now to academicians and their academic camp followers like Rod.
The good news is, there won't be any hard thinking involved like actual philosophers and stuff (Have you ever tried to read a real philosopher? C'mon...what a tedious time suck.), just whoever's currently popular in sociology, like Jonathan Haidt. Sociology's best for this sort of thing anyway, because you don't have to prove anything, just quote it.
But what about blue collar folks? Unfortunately, at least according to the caption here, they're going to drink themselves to death in twenty years anyway. Poor choices in wine, no doubt, but really, what is one supposed to do?
That unpleasantness aside, though, (they probably wouldn't like Rieff or Haidt anyway), isn't this newly proclaimed inclusiveness wonderful? Almost like this:
And if you tell your potential publisher your target audience has now been enlarged to include "living literate human beings (of good faith)", surely it can only help.
"It is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one." — Gandalf the Wizard, The Fellowship of the Ring
