Martin Gurri has a piece on the humility of an analyst and the limits of ideas. Truth & Its Consequences.

Reasonably smart people and relatively deep thinkers feel the need to matter, just like everyone. They also feel the need to explain.

How much do you really know?

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Patrick Deneen discusses recovering the ancients to re-orient the present and modernity towards flourishing (likely on the Straussian curve). The elites and the people each have their talents, but right now everyone seems to be either within or against a faltering structure of elites.

Is that really what’s going on?

There are people who can, and people who can’t. There are rules and ‘rule-following punishers’. There is constant reinforcement of what is good and what is not, and there are ends contained within ideas. We’re now selecting for abstract, symbolic and practical intelligence very strongly, and very early on.

But what about virtue amongst institutions full with a lot of virtue-signalling? What about small towns?

Oh, there will be ambitious people, strong and smart people, and warriors. But what about when people are or become rotten in some way? Or wrong and there too long? What constrains the folks making more important decisions and what constrains people downstream of them (from becoming violent, especially)?

A lot of folks on the dissident right see libertarianism/liberalism as two sides of the same, modern coin. Some folks on the far right live in identity politics and power-all-the-way-down theories (a natural reaction to the Hitler-year-zero Left…though some of it was always there…here I go again on the Straussian curve). Others are pointing out the virtues of neo-feudalism and monarchism (power matters) while still others are Catholics (certainly a hierarchy there).

There’s a lot of searching. Dear Reader, I still have my doubts.

Food for thought. Thanks for reading. I’m busy with life and work, mostly.

I wish you all the best.