In the past few months, I have begun to limit my reading of blogs more and more - including those I have been reading a long time. This was not a strategy, was not intentional - but something that I realize has crept-up on me.
If I try to explain or justify this, I think the answer has to do with the continuing phenomenon I have often called "things coming to a point" - which I understand to be something that happens when the world is getting spiritually worse over time.
When the world is getting worse, then the spontaneous default is for "everything" to get worse; which implies that if we personally do not want to share in the corruption, then we must spiritually detach from more, and yet more, of "the world".
And the process is ongoing, because the world keeps worsening.
Insofar as we fail to do this, we will join ourselves to the increasing corruption of the world.
And this corruption will reveal itself - both passively, in terms of what we go along with; but also actively in terms of what we explicitly support.
I think this latter, for me, is the critical aspect: I mean, what people actively support; and more especially what I infer to be their motives for doing so.
We all differ in our specific tolerances; and I personally have a particularly strong aversion for spitefulness and Schadenfreude - and these seem to be stronger and stronger motivations behind more and more online writing.
It is this, more than anything, that has driven me away from one after another blog; a sense that the ideas, ideology or religion is in fact serving primarily as an excuse for indulging in the expression and advocacy of spite and sadism.
Like most sin; once defended and apologized, such a writer gets to enjoy his revenge and retribution fantasies - until they undercut or swamp the good-motivated stuff.
The ideas - including the expressed Christian beliefs - have become a rationale for negative values; the negative values induce a dominant orientation on enemies and what should or shall happen to them.
In my experience, people in the grip of such demonic passions are hopeless and unreachable - and indeed are fed by any form of engagement: they thrive on opposition, and they thrive on constructive and empathic approaches.
(This may also be seen in the extraordinary and escalating levels of braggadocio and self-aggrandisement among far too many bloggers; which provoke in me a mixture of irritation and embarrassment - much as when observing the antics of an kindergarten kid having a tantrum!)
So disengagement is the proper strategy - as it is with the demon-dominated, psychopath-mediated, world of public policy and discourse.
Disengagement (with lapses, alas) is therefore exactly what I have been spontaneously engaged-in, actively trying to do; and, to an increasing degree, actually doing.
8 comments:
"We all differ in our specific tolerances; and I personally have a particularly strong aversion for spitefulness and Schadenfreude - and these seem to be stronger and stronger motivations behind more and more online writing."
i have noticed that i too have developed this aversion to such. it is no accident that this proclivity was nourished in myself only after discovering your elucidations of double-negative theology & conceptualizations. having the term "double-negative" to describe or "contain" the phenomenon has been endlessly helpful. and i have you to thank.
having said that, i can feel the contorting or distortion of self -even my musculature such as the expression on my face or the tension of my muscles especially in my neck or my back- at the coming of spiteful or vindictive notions. where once i might've fought such intrusive thoughts i have become practised at reorienting my vision toward that which is higher immediately. "resist not evil," i suppose...
i don't think i can frame my disengagement entirely as a virtue. mostly i am just extremely bored by all of it. and i don't really understand how anyone can be enthusiastic about the news, geopolitics or culture wars etc etc.
despite so much optimism (about all the wrong things), there is no positive vision at all to any of it. and thus also no creativity. (without even getting into the 'AI' part of it). it's all stale, and very disheartening to engage with. disorienting also, if sustained. maybe i'm getting old.
One thing that I have increasingly come to value is straightforward writing. If someone has a something, to say, then he should just say it. I am not saying anything against different styles of writing. There are a variety of ways to say anything, but what has become tedious is excessive rhetoricizing, especially saying that everybody else is dumb.
Sure, it is true that people have different intellectual capacities and amounts of knowledge, but so be it. People should just make the point, expand on it as necessary, and just leave it at that.
@Laeth - "i don't think i can frame my disengagement entirely as a virtue"
Well, I should have added that (as always) the behaviour disengagement is only a virtue if/when properly inwardly-motivated.
@NLR - "what has become tedious is excessive rhetoricizing, especially saying that everybody else is dumb"
Yes, that is true. Of course, people always ask Why one disagrees with the consensus (they are so many, and so eminent!), and if there is a coherent answer it will involve some version of claiming that "I know better than them" for one reason or another. But the inner motivation for saying this is what matters - and prideful/ spiteful motivations too often come through in the answer.
In kindergarten terms: if it comes out like - "because I'm the best in the world at everything, and you smell" - then that is a Bad sign - and that is exactly how it does come out in too many bloggers!
My experience in the past year has been of the blogs I normally read disappearing, usually because the blogger has moved entirely to podcasts, or sometimes tried a paywall, or died, or in some cases have obviously been suppressed. The "dead internet" is happening.
However, I think humanity has been under assault, at least since 2020, by some sort of malevolent force, either a really powerful Cabal, or some supernatural entity, or maybe a mixture of both. I think Bruce Charlton gets this, as does the blogger at the Anonymous Conservative blog, and there are times Theodore Beale at Vox Day and Miri Finch at Miri AF seem to get. But elsewhere I get too much overfocusing on the trees at the expense of the forest, or tribalism. This sort of thing gets less useful each year.
Anger tends to become central, the actual focus more of a pretext; there are people who delight in the suffering of not even their enemies but just anyone not wholly on their side. I see these as Inquisitor types, very black & white "burn the heretic" in their ardor.
I also find the self-aggrandizement of some a little wearying, I mean that if someone keeps finding excuses to remind you of his high IQ and accomplishments, at some point I want to say, Can we just take that for granted & then not talk about it again? There's a lot to be said for modesty.
My allergy to braggadocio has become so developed that I've come to dislike church services (Mass) with choirs-- as every choir-leader always seems so full of herself, or himself. However, I'm sure this reaction is rooted in less-than-admirable traits in myself, such as envy, resentment, and desire for attention. But I do feel vicarious embarrassment at braggadocio, so I was interested you mentioned that specifically.
And then there's another part of me that thinks-- we are all under the shadow of death and there is so much pain and suffering, let people have their little vanities.
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