This page is a repository of links to things I have written on one subject. Culture is downstream from ideas and ideas have consequences, we know this. Russell Kirk penned in 1982, “whether our civilization really retains coherence sufficient for restoration to be possible may be made clear to all thinking men within a few years.”[1] Thinking men indeed do know the answer in our time. I have written here often that there is no cultural war being fought, it is over, and traditionalists lost. Loud neo-reactionaries notwithstanding, we are no longer fighting, and cannot fight in a restorative way. The center truly does not hold, the falcon no longer hears the falconer. We few, we bloody and proud few, the sparse millions that remain that know something of what was, we are but strangers in a strange land. A people always ends by resembling its shadow Kipling said, and while everything has changed it retains the shape of what was. We will find in the days and years to come that there are more strangers in this land that do not yet know that of themselves. These articles intend to first show the complexity of our situation and some of its forms, so as to dissuade any and all that seek unity for simple solutions. You cannot solve wicked generational problems with slogans or simplicity. Secondly, and most importantly, the intent is to provide hope and inspiration to do the things we can and should. If as Yeats wrote, things fall apart, we know we can see it, we also know that reformation is required in the aftermath. These are the times that try men’s souls, but it is a time ripe with metaphorical gardens to be tended and work to be done.
The link below is something of a primer that deals with the tensions between man's innovation and ideas in secular history over and against redemptive history. It attempts to explain how we got here through a few centuries of implementing innovations and ideas poorly and in so doing producing residue that caused additional problems.
The Last Roman: Intercivilizational Clash of Cultures and the Hyperreal
The link above deals with cycles, history, the nature of things, and revealed truth. I first read Spengler around 2010. He is and remains the foremost genius in describing what I attempt to summarize. But he excluded true truth as a foundational consideration. More recently Howe and Strauss attempted to describe it all in pseudo-scientific terms. Their greatest contribution is documenting how awakenings affect history in the generations that experience them and follow. Francis Shaeffer too, in some ways better than Spengler because Shaeffer was dealing with true truth. Someone much more capable than I will synthesize what is true from each of these men into a better, more complete presentation.
