Leftists tend to commodify everything, and once they extract the commodity from an experience, they learn how to game reality to access the commodity directly, without any consideration for the stuff they throw away.
Love and connection are viewed as commodities, and any way of accessing these states are measured in their efficiency and reliability of accessing these states. Hard drugs like MDMA are more valid than marriage because they are better at accessing a state of euphoria. Circling is de facto good because it feels good, full stop.
Beyond that, leftists have zero regard for Chesterton's Fences. Actually, that's not true. A good leftist is a Fence Terminator, programmed to seek and destroy every fence in sight. Monogamy? Destroy. Marriage? Destroy. Family? Destroy. Gender roles? Destroy.
Anyone inclined to uphold the faintest hint of tradition is the enemy. That is in essence what gets one labelled far-right. And the more the progressives strip away culture and tradition, the more inclined I become to protect it.
Anyways, wonderful essay. There's a lot more there than meets the eye.
Tremendous post — maybe the quality of a State can be glimpsed from the quality of boyfriends and wives and friendships among the regime's people. Virginities lost in Hoxha's defunct bunkers, Romanian orphanages, leftover women, incels & roasties, ISIS sex slaves, hikkikomori. Where are the least dysfunctional marriages the most common?
OMG - that must've been the longest 2 months of your adult life. I've been happily married for 21 years as of yesterday. Boy, it's gone fast. The key to its success has been to call each other out on our bs & to have a deep commitment to ensuring that the highest values that each of us embraces is at a minimum respected & more often than not supported. Of course, it helps that I think we were both mature emotionally before we got married & our philosophy is very similar even if our personal interests are very different.
To the young men & women on this board, if a relationship is hard, it's not the right relationship. Sure, you will have hard times, but day to day, it should be easy not a challenge.
My ex tried to rope me into some of this stuff. We had a healthy great thing going and it just dissolved when she started getting more involved in these types of experiences. She was/is paying for an unlicensed therapist, a business coach, and a life coach doing multiple sessions every week. all of these sessions resembled one-on-one circling. then we broke up because she believed we didn't have a deep enough connection go figure.
This discussion reminds me of that story, “Hunters in the Snow.” A “circling” marriage is just a fat guy gorging on pancakes affirming a guy leaving his wife and kids for an underage girl, while yet another guy is dying in the bed of a pickup truck in the parking lot.
The central point about the acid rain destroying not only marriages but love and fellow-feeling reminds me of something Wendell Berry said in "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine": "Marriage has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided."
“ as a serious, respectful grownup, I had to take it seriously” - I think Curtis makes an important observation about the difference between friendship and a relationship/marriage. When you’re in a relationship, the other person is a part of you, so you can’t detach and let them do what they want the way you would with a friend.
And I didn't think I could appreciate my wife more than I do already. When we started seeing each other I tried to break it off but asked her to date me the minute I saw the pain in her reaction. The goal of not hurting each other is effortless as long as we both acknowledge that's the goal, and I don't think we've ever had to acknowledge it out loud to one another. Being twice-divorced I'm obviously not the natural one at marriage. Our friends in a variety of relationship states or configurations ask us for advice and it's almost impossible for me to articulate what they should expect or foster in a partner. Some are the probably the circling type and I don't know where to start, but I think a lot of what's in this hits it squarely on the head. I don't know you past your blogs but I'm extremely sorry for your loss.
The last book chapter post was uploaded in February. Can you please continue writing the book? After all, that's how Gray Mirror was advertised: A preview of the upcoming book.
Fascinating seeing these posts since I was dragged by an ex into a bit of old Landmark-style brainwashing myself. Only after a few long weekends did I begin the horrific process of realizing I had been totally manipulated into a struggle-session emotional orgy.
The real fun begins when you see that these groups, struggle-sessions with a dash of love-bombing, or vice-versa, exist because they are familiar; they are the exact dynamics that countless experience who grew up with co-dependent/narcissistic parents. One therapist friend told me she thinks that this is presently the vast majority of American marriages.
So, I hope that the staff of the USG liquidation committee will have some good psychotherapists as well as executives.
If you look at the results coming out of PTSD studies and MDMA use the results are quiet remarkable. I've used MDMA with a therapist in the past with great results (I'm here having a healthy relationship with neo-reaction aren't I!) - but as with everything and every substance its all 'set and setting'. We have to keep in mind that a lot of the reasons Psychedelic medicine and some of the more unorthodox gestalt therapies developed post-war ended up in strange and in some cases unhinged places was because of the culture wars being waged at the time and substances like MDMA and LSD being made illegal even for research and long harsh prison sentences being doled out with regularity...the intersection of the cathedral's rejection of these substances and methods as legitimate or even worthy of research combined with the right wing/so-con demonization in the 50s-90s is an interesting world to explore...
Curtis, I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that had you met that woman when you were the same age when you met your late wife things would be different. Circling and all that shit notwithstanding.
Leftists tend to commodify everything, and once they extract the commodity from an experience, they learn how to game reality to access the commodity directly, without any consideration for the stuff they throw away.
Love and connection are viewed as commodities, and any way of accessing these states are measured in their efficiency and reliability of accessing these states. Hard drugs like MDMA are more valid than marriage because they are better at accessing a state of euphoria. Circling is de facto good because it feels good, full stop.
Beyond that, leftists have zero regard for Chesterton's Fences. Actually, that's not true. A good leftist is a Fence Terminator, programmed to seek and destroy every fence in sight. Monogamy? Destroy. Marriage? Destroy. Family? Destroy. Gender roles? Destroy.
Anyone inclined to uphold the faintest hint of tradition is the enemy. That is in essence what gets one labelled far-right. And the more the progressives strip away culture and tradition, the more inclined I become to protect it.
Anyways, wonderful essay. There's a lot more there than meets the eye.
Tremendous post — maybe the quality of a State can be glimpsed from the quality of boyfriends and wives and friendships among the regime's people. Virginities lost in Hoxha's defunct bunkers, Romanian orphanages, leftover women, incels & roasties, ISIS sex slaves, hikkikomori. Where are the least dysfunctional marriages the most common?
Covenant marriage is superior to contract marriage—the latter always has in prospect efficient breach, and so it unravels.
OMG - that must've been the longest 2 months of your adult life. I've been happily married for 21 years as of yesterday. Boy, it's gone fast. The key to its success has been to call each other out on our bs & to have a deep commitment to ensuring that the highest values that each of us embraces is at a minimum respected & more often than not supported. Of course, it helps that I think we were both mature emotionally before we got married & our philosophy is very similar even if our personal interests are very different.
To the young men & women on this board, if a relationship is hard, it's not the right relationship. Sure, you will have hard times, but day to day, it should be easy not a challenge.
My ex tried to rope me into some of this stuff. We had a healthy great thing going and it just dissolved when she started getting more involved in these types of experiences. She was/is paying for an unlicensed therapist, a business coach, and a life coach doing multiple sessions every week. all of these sessions resembled one-on-one circling. then we broke up because she believed we didn't have a deep enough connection go figure.
This discussion reminds me of that story, “Hunters in the Snow.” A “circling” marriage is just a fat guy gorging on pancakes affirming a guy leaving his wife and kids for an underage girl, while yet another guy is dying in the bed of a pickup truck in the parking lot.
The central point about the acid rain destroying not only marriages but love and fellow-feeling reminds me of something Wendell Berry said in "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine": "Marriage has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided."
“ as a serious, respectful grownup, I had to take it seriously” - I think Curtis makes an important observation about the difference between friendship and a relationship/marriage. When you’re in a relationship, the other person is a part of you, so you can’t detach and let them do what they want the way you would with a friend.
And I didn't think I could appreciate my wife more than I do already. When we started seeing each other I tried to break it off but asked her to date me the minute I saw the pain in her reaction. The goal of not hurting each other is effortless as long as we both acknowledge that's the goal, and I don't think we've ever had to acknowledge it out loud to one another. Being twice-divorced I'm obviously not the natural one at marriage. Our friends in a variety of relationship states or configurations ask us for advice and it's almost impossible for me to articulate what they should expect or foster in a partner. Some are the probably the circling type and I don't know where to start, but I think a lot of what's in this hits it squarely on the head. I don't know you past your blogs but I'm extremely sorry for your loss.
The last book chapter post was uploaded in February. Can you please continue writing the book? After all, that's how Gray Mirror was advertised: A preview of the upcoming book.
Fascinating seeing these posts since I was dragged by an ex into a bit of old Landmark-style brainwashing myself. Only after a few long weekends did I begin the horrific process of realizing I had been totally manipulated into a struggle-session emotional orgy.
The real fun begins when you see that these groups, struggle-sessions with a dash of love-bombing, or vice-versa, exist because they are familiar; they are the exact dynamics that countless experience who grew up with co-dependent/narcissistic parents. One therapist friend told me she thinks that this is presently the vast majority of American marriages.
So, I hope that the staff of the USG liquidation committee will have some good psychotherapists as well as executives.
If you look at the results coming out of PTSD studies and MDMA use the results are quiet remarkable. I've used MDMA with a therapist in the past with great results (I'm here having a healthy relationship with neo-reaction aren't I!) - but as with everything and every substance its all 'set and setting'. We have to keep in mind that a lot of the reasons Psychedelic medicine and some of the more unorthodox gestalt therapies developed post-war ended up in strange and in some cases unhinged places was because of the culture wars being waged at the time and substances like MDMA and LSD being made illegal even for research and long harsh prison sentences being doled out with regularity...the intersection of the cathedral's rejection of these substances and methods as legitimate or even worthy of research combined with the right wing/so-con demonization in the 50s-90s is an interesting world to explore...
Curtis, I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that had you met that woman when you were the same age when you met your late wife things would be different. Circling and all that shit notwithstanding.
Holy Shit this was an incredible read
I love what you wrote. It's not that that you inspired hope, although you may have. It's that you zeroed out loving well.
If this turns into a Nuns' bar, I'm out of here.