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Rod Dreher and the “Benedict Option”
This past week, Rod posted a remarkable bleg over on the website of the American Conservative. Because Rod’s premise is so arresting–he believes we’ve about reached the point at which good and decent people need to drop out of American society to form their own counterculture–and because Rod himself is such a sweet writer, I thought I’d re-post his bleg right here.
To wit:
You who have been following my work for years know that I keep coming around to this idea of the “Benedict Option.” In short, it means this: At what point do the conditions of moral breakdown and atomization become such that people who want to live out the moral life in community realize that they have to secede from mainstream culture in a serious way? The idea comes from MacIntyre’s final paragraph in After Virtue:
“A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead…was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point…This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless quite different — St. Benedict.”
I’m working on a piece right now for the magazine [the American Conservative] on the feasibility of what I call the Benedict Option for our culture. That is, what “new forms of community” might we realistically construct for the purpose of living out our faith and moral values together, against a hostile culture? What I’m not looking for is any manifestation of radical separatism. Rather, I’m looking for real-life examples that conservatives, religious and otherwise, are doing, and that might be an option for others.
For example, I spoke yesterday to the abbot of the Clear Creek Abbey in rural eastern Oklahoma, and am going to make a visit there soon to talk to people in their community. Since that traditional Benedictine congregation started building its monastery in the late 1990s, a community of Catholic laity who wanted to settle in the monastery’s shadow and participate in its liturgical life have relocated there. I’m interested to learn how they’ve done. The abbot told me that many of them live in material poverty, but spiritual joy. I’d like to see for myself, and the abbot very kindly invited me to come for a visit.
I have other, non-Catholic examples in mind. Please send me your own suggestions.
What are we to make of this, Ricochetti? Do you accept Rod’s premise–that is, that it’s high time to consider the “Benedict Option?” And if you do, what suggestions would you offer to Rod?
Published in General
Katie, a great marriage such as the Adams’ is something like a matriarchy within patriarchy. But the man still predominates. Emphasis on “pre.”
That’s my point.
Moreover, Adams represented the family in the political community. Consciousness was utterly different prior to feminism’s or individuality’s (or the “universal’s”) overwhelming everything else (the particular; the political): the Founders literally did not see people first as individuals but rather first as men and women.
How do I know that?
Because they didn’t allow women to vote.
Other side of Adams marriage: Male friendships such as between Adams and Jefferson today are basically inconceivable — male friendship today is radically weakened because of “gayness” suspicions (my most crucial point above: pederasty in the ancient polis). Like I say, our world is defined by the rejection of the noble in the name of the just.
Any argument for the noble today founders upon people’s notion of equality however understood. Hence your talk of “values.” “Values” as preferences or reasonable grounding for individual morals, as opposed to some generalized political teaching, is fine. But as a political matter, it is coextensive with history or will. Again, see Kenneth Green on George.
You’re not alive to the self-evident reality that women everywhere and always are attracted to, seek out, dominant men — in other words, men who have at least as much prestige/status (material or otherwise) as they themselves.
It comes down to this: so that the dominance and submission that’s inherent to the sex act does not overwhelm the rest of the marriage, or the rest of how the sexes relate to each other in general or outside of marriage, civilized patriarchy is necessary. It’s necessary because, in a nutshell, as I’ve explained further here (I don’t think you’re reading my links), women simply will not civilize men if girls and women are not first educated properly.
Moreover, women competing for men with jobs — all women forced into Locke’s joyless quest for joy — causes marital breakdown at the middle to lower economic levels because vulgarity is then the only way for male thumos to be recognized. Men will put up with the joyless quest for joy — there’s nothing noble/beautiful about capitalism — if honor is_involved.
And this is bound up with your denial of a certain pride of place for male honor.
Do you in any of these links define “civilized patriarchy” or explain how to put it into practice?
I don’t recognize any legitimate accomplishments about feminism, as I already explained, feminism is simply and utterly factually incorrect. The real or blunt point I’m getting at in all this: to ultimately make the real argument against SSM, one has to argue against allowing women the right to vote. So indeed we are down the rabbit hole. ·27 minutes ago
I certainly feel like I’m down a rabbit hole…
I agree that women tend to “seek out men who have at least as much prestige/status (material or otherwise) as they do.” I completely fail to see how you get from that premise to “therefore, women should not be allowed to vote.”
I don’t recognize any legitimate accomplishments about feminism, as I already explained, feminism is simply and utterly factually incorrect. The real or blunt point I’m getting at in all this: to ultimately make the real argument against SSM, one has to argue against allowing women the right to vote. So indeed we are down the rabbit hole. ·27 minutes ago
I certainly feel like I’m down a rabbit hole…
I agree that women tend to “seek out men who have at least as much prestige/status (material or otherwise) as they do.” I completely fail to see how you get from that premise to “therefore, women should not be allowed to vote.” ·3 minutes ago
You might attend to what I’m saying about how the founders did not first see people as individuals but rather as men/women. Also about Locke, work, male recognition.
In fine, women are not political. Read Mansfield.
In fine, women are not political.
The female members of Ricochet would seem to disprove that assertion.
In fine, women are not political.
The female members of Ricochet would seem to disprove that assertion.
I’m talking about women as a whole. Most women are not political in the precise sense, as I’ve been explaining earlier in the thread about the nature of “the particular” in contradistinction to the universal, the founding, self-evident truths, “values.” So you’re ignoring an important theme of my arguments: that it’s perfectly possible for politics to be apolitical politics, as Katie’s manifestly is.
See Mansfield, “The Apolitical Politics of Progressivism.”
Or if you want a deeper take, see my account of Heidegger/Strauss’s insight into the apolitical nature of Aristotle — interesting discussion last year with Crowe’s Nest and Pseud.
Do you in any of these links define “civilized patriarchy” or explain how to put it into practice?
I really don’t know how to put it into practice. But I offered teaching girls about the wisdom and actual happiness to be derived from being chaste, thus making themselves into objects of adoration by men, as a very wise big first step. But this is utterly anathema to an era of raunch feminism and Sex and the City. So I rather doubt it would take hold, as our world, as I keep saying, is defined by the outright rejection of the noble or beautiful.
Patriarchy in some form is always regnant. Our “gender neutral society” is obviously a hearkening of barbaric patriarchy, something always intrinsic to oligarchy which America is fast becoming, especially as it comes ever more to resemble Latin America, Hispanics with slavish habits, etc. You can only have forms of either civilized or barbaric patriarchy.
Civilized patriarchy is pretty clear if you read history prior to fifty years ago. To that end, Tom West’s Vindicating the Founders, as political philosophic history aimed at an intelligent lay audience — a fairly quick read too — is phenomenal.
I really don’t know how to put it into practice. But I offered teaching girls about the wisdom and actual happiness to be derived from being chaste, thus making themselves into objects of adoration by men, as a very wise big first step. But this is utterly anathema to an era of raunch feminism and Sex and the City.
I think Katie’s point is that we should be able to separate feminism’s legitimate achievements from it’s silly excesses.
I see a parallel with the civil rights movement: abolishing first slavery, then segregation and Jim Crow laws were monumental advances for the cause of human liberty and dignity. Having achieved all its legitimate aims, the movement then degenerated into a vehicle for pushing racial quotas and promoting multiculturalism.
Similarly after feminism won the right to vote and to equal treatment under the laws, it degenerated into promoting abortion and a “gender neutral society.” That is unfortunate, but we should treat that separately.
Promoting “civilized patriarchy” makes it sound as if you advocate undoing the legitimate accomplishments of feminism and restoring laws that make women inferior to men in property rights, voting rights, etc.
I think Katie’s point is that we should be able to separate feminism’s legitimate achievements from it’s silly excesses.
I see a parallel with the civil rights movement: abolishing first slavery, then segregation and Jim Crow laws were monumental advances for the cause of human liberty and dignity. Having achieved all its legitimate aims, the movement then degenerated into a vehicle for pushing racial quotas and promoting multiculturalism.
Similarly after feminism won the right to vote and to equal treatment under the laws, it degenerated into promoting abortion and a “gender neutral society.” That is unfortunate, but we should treat that separately.
Promoting “civilized patriarchy” makes it sound as if you advocate undoing the legitimate accomplishments of feminism and restoring laws that make women inferior to men in property rights, voting rights, etc. ·0 minutes ago
I don’t recognize any legitimate accomplishments about feminism, as I already explained, feminism is simply and utterly factually incorrect. The real or blunt point I’m getting at in all this: to ultimately make the real argument against SSM, one has to argue against allowing women the right to vote. So indeed we are down the rabbit hole.