TL;DR
Life has scarcely ever felt so heavy
The internet's got maybe 5 years left, if we're lucky
Something cool is going on in Argentina
Why do we confuse ideas with identities?
Plus: Bonhoffer, Starkey, C S Lewis ... and Charlie Kirk
HUMAN
What if faith in Canada lost its tax‑privileges?
Canada’s Finance Committee is considering stripping religious charities (and specifically anti‑abortion groups) of "charitable status" under the Income Tax Act. Churches, mosques, synagogues, etc, could find their donation incomes hammered. This is a bare-faced attack on freedom of expression and conscience, combined with an attempt to boost government revenues. It's wokeism gone mad in Canada, but what else is new?
Something fascinating is happening in Argentina.
talked to Javier Milei about his sweeping agenda to turn Argentina into “the world’s freest country,” after inheriting hyperinflation, an overburdened public sector, and a collapsing currency. He’s pushing radical reforms — slashing government spending, deregulating markets, and fundamentally altering Argentina’s economic regime — and so far has had considerable success. But he's a long way from North-American-level inflation. He's made a lot of enemies who want the old corrupt ways back. And there's no guarantee the road will be pain-free, or that he'll be in power long enough to see it all through. I'm watching this space with great interest.
"Never attrribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity".
Not sure where I heard, but it's a good derivative of Dietrich Boenhoffer's line "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice." And we're all susceptible. Bonhoffer's recommended cure: (1) Constantly challenge your own assumptions and beliefs; (2) Actively seek out diverse perspectives and evidence; (3) Engage in respectful debate, even with those who disagree.
We're all a confusing mass of contradictions.
That's what makes us human, even as it's maddening. Two completely different discussions on this: One a
essay, the other a super YouTube encounter betwen the Triggernometry guys and half of the most popular podcast on the internet right now. Really good read and watch.
Britain is not a democracy anymore.
That’s historian David Starkey’s take. He argues that Britain has been through a quiet revolution that started in 1997 with Tony Blair's New Labour. Used to be that we were government by Parliament, which is where the Governors and the Governed worked out how to live together. Blair moved most power to the new Supreme Court and to dozens of Quango's (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations), all of who were unelected committees of "experts" and were unaccountable to the public. Cameron's Tories found this incredibly convenient when they were in power, and continued it. Hence the mess the US is in today.
"In a room full of strangers, I find a man to speak with …
“… because the rules of engagement are clear ... I can connect with men in the realm of ideas, while I rarely find this to be true among women ... Even with the women I know able to think abstractly, we tend to default to relational and emotional topics with each other because they’re safe, and no one can challenge them." OUCH. Can't imagine that won her any friends, but she was brutally honest, and it’s a really good read. It made me think of women I've heard in the past say they actually preferred the company of men. I wonder if this was why.
sure made me think.
Nihilism is alive and well … sadly.
“Young people today are dealing with a crisis of purpose. They’ve lost sight of the big things to live for anymore, including not having religion.” - Pat McMonigle, ex-FBI agent, after they hung him out to dry for having the nerve to suffer PTSD. I’d really like to swear here, but there’s enough of that on Substack already, so I’ll refrain. I tip my hat to this guy.
“We were promised sufferings,” wrote C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed.
“They were part of the program." This is an excellent piece on finding meaning in suffering, and even embracing the suffering. I resonated deeply with this by
(though this is not the time or place to talk about why).TECHNOLOGY
The web's got maybe 5 years left - AI is slowly killing it off.
puts out excellent stuff. I don’t know why his newsletters are not more popular. He’s published an excellent (if terrifying) piece, elaborating on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince's prediction that AI is killing off the creator economy. The upshot: Big AI firms are scrambling to find new data on which to train their LLMs, but they are their own worst enemies. They have severed the link between creators and searchers. There's less and less data because it's no longer in creators' interests to create it. Creators wil be out of work, and AI engines, feeding LLMs on their own vomit, will gradually die off as well. Internet, dead. Can anyone see a flaw in the argument? If so, please leave a comment: I want to hear it.
BUT ... this AI tool doesn't need an LLM?
Might circumvent the probem? Maybe? It's not out yet, but I'd love to get my mitts on it.
VIEW FROM THE LAPTOP
If I wanted to make a fairly quick pile of piasters, think I know what I'd do:
I'd start an YouTube channel called Right-Wing RageTV, and use AI to generate and post a 10-minute video per day, railing against the Left and all the Charlie Kirk haters.
It would get views and subscribers SO fast right now. Two months of that, and I'd be receiving cheques from YouTube.
There would, of course, be the small problem of inflaming what is already a tinder box of public sentiment in the West. I'd be helping make a bad situation worse.
But hey! I'd be making serious bank. I mean, scruples and ethics are kind of inconvenient for business, right?
Worst thing that could happen would be, the Rage dies down, people forgive each other, and life gets peachy. Oh man, I shudder to think.
(Actually, there might also be the problem of YouTube shutting my channel down. There go my cheques. But I could just move it to Rumble and elsewhere. Happy again!)
Point being ...
Rage is everywhere these days.
And public rage is sooooooo convenient for business. You just get behind the angry animal and help prod it along. Hell, you might not even have to prod it. You just let it DRAG you along, kicking and screaming all the way to the bank.
Rage is such a convenient emotion, on so many levels. Setting business aside ...
1. It's the ultimate life simplifier.
It boils all of your life down to just one issue, and it divides the world neatly in two, along which side of the issue they fall. Nothing else matters when you're angry. Just this one issue.
2. It gives me an instant tribe to belong to.
Immediately, I join the ranks of the Angry. The ones on the right side of history. I have a bunch of friends. We can console each other, and mutually encourage each other to stay Angry.
3. It gives you Real Purpose. There's justice to be done.
When I think of Rage, my mind immediately goes back to my university days.
I attended this one, fairly large Calvary Church on Pape Avenue in Toronto. Very anglo-saxon, conservative congregation, although the hymn singing could occasionally be gusty. Established early in the 20th Century, it's still going - I've been back there a few times in recent years, and other than the faces, not much has changed.
Back in the 80's, there was this one lady in the congregation who epitomised Rage.
Why she attended regularly was beyond me. Her expression was continuously sour and bitter. Never knew her name, and thankfully I never met her properly. But you could see her coming. Her daily breakfast must have been raw lemons.
One morning, something in the sermon must have rubbed her the wrong way. She erupted. "I think I've had ENOUGH! I'm LEAVING!" and stomped down the aisle to the door. "Yes, please do" replied the preacher calmly, probably thinking fast about how to defuse the scene. It all happened so fast and unexpectedly. This was well outside decorum. She was still shouting as she left the church, and we could hear her screeching outside.
The pastor calmed us all down, but I don't imagine that day was on his Top 10 Favourite Sundays Ever. It was just the first of several quite public eruptions over the following months.
Eh? She came back? Yes, quite regularly. And always with an axe to grind, publicly and loudly if possible. I'd have thought, If you were that angry, you'd never darken the door of that place, or any other church. But no, she kept coming back.
I never knew what lay behind her ire, but eventually the church elders had had enough. Thereafter, every Sunday morning as I arrived, two of them would be peering out the door, down the street. They were under orders to keep her out. One Sunday, she was a few steps ahead of me as I arrived. Then spotting the gatekeeprs, she wheeled and turned, snarling, expression poisonous enough to make the Devil wonder if he'd overdone it.
Crazy thing is, she'd be back the following Sunday, determined to be disruptive. It was quite some time before she disappeared from the radar.
That's Rage. That's Anger.
And there's a shedload of it out there right now. Everywhere.
I had no idea who Charlie Kirk was.
Had heard his name mentioned somewhere. That's it. His murder only came to my attention when two friends posted in a private channel.
Nevertheless, it left me floored, for two days. I wasn't terribly productive the rest of the week.
It is less the awfulness of the actual assassination, than the celebratory reaction to it by so many people. And not by low-lifes or neer-do-wells. By journalists. School teachers. Lawyers. Professors, for pete’s sake.
"Shooting's too good for people like this". coming from a Harvard academic. (A Harvard academic? Jaw drop. She has since been suspended, but ... still!)
"Ben Shapiro next, please!"
And gleefully, "Charlie Kirk wasn't even martyr material! This won't motivate anyone!" (She’s plenty wrong on that count.)
People dancing and singing on camera (badly, but sincerely).
A debate at Yale U on the motion something like "Violence is never an acceptable against speech you detest" failed by roughly 2:1, even after hearing from Martin Luther King III (one of the proponent debaters).
In short, I discovered last week that a very large fraction of the people I innocently cross paths with every week have no problem with the idea of killing someone they disagree with.
Perhaps fortunately, most such pro-violence people appear to be cowards. They aren't practising what they preach, just encouraging other folk to take the action they haven't (yet) the guts to take. How long will they remain cowards, I wonder?
In reality, nothing changed with the murders of Charlie Kirk and Iryna Zarutska.
What changed was perceptions.
A lot of us had mental models of the universe that said: We're all pretty safe. The people around us, while not necessarily friendly, at least weren't hostile, and could be trusted to leave us physically an emotionally alone, even in the event of a disagreement.
More fool us. Now we know better. All those mental models got a major update last week.
Now I know that, if while riding the bus or train, I say the wrong thing, innocently or otherwise:
A small (but non-trivial) fraction of the people sitting around us will happily use a weapon on me, and think they're doing the world a favour.
A much larrger fraction, while not having the guts to pull the trigger themselves, will cheer on the one doing it, kick my dead body, and stomp on my grave.
Ain't no SAFE anymore, anywhere.
I'm not sure what name to give the emotion I felt last week, reading and watching those reports.
It was a potent mix of disgust, despair, incredulity, and yes ... Rage.
The same emotion those people on the bus might feel for me, perhaps?
What would it take for ME to grab desperately for something with which to waste some individual whom I think the earth should be rid of?
I apologise if this is tiresome reading. I'm trying to process it all.
Copywriter Blair Warren has a cool 27-word persuasion mantra:
"People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies."
Was always curious why he included that phrase "help them throw rocks at their enemies". Seemed a bit extreme. Now I think he's right. I might be no better than those people mocking me on the bus. I wouldn't mourn their loss any more than they'd mourn mine.
I do not know how we collectively walk back from the edge of this cliff. (We've been on the edge for some time, in reality.) I do not know if we're past the point of No Return.
Here's what I do know.
Rage isn't the problem.
Rage is a human enough reaction to an event you know to be Evil.
The problem is Unforgiveness.
The problem is Not Letting The Fire Die Out.
Rage is a fire born with a fixed quantity of fuel. When the fuel is spent, the fire dies down, and you're left to be calm and reflective. The sense of Purpose, the Tribe you just joined, the Simplicity you gained ... fades away.
And you're left with a choice.
1. Forgive Charlie's assassin? And forgive the @£$%^& numpties for making sickening comments? (Forgiveness brings a TON of simplicity too, btw. I speak from experience.)
2. Or add more fuel to the fire, and stoke the Rage?
I choose #1. I hope you do too.
FROM THE SOURCE
Just finished speed-reading through the book of Esther.
The scene is Iran, many centuries before Mohammed and Islam even existed. The Persian and Median empire runs from Sudan to India, and many Jews have been exiled there.
Esther, and her cousin/guardian Mordecai, end up saving the day when a terrible threat comes upon them. And it's the nature of the threat that intrigues me.
King Xerxes has a prime-ministerial-level aide named Haman, who has an ego that has trouble fitting through every doorway. The king has elevated him to such a degree that when he passes by, everyone is expected to kneel and pay him honour.
And all do, except Mordecai.
He's Jewish, and righteously so. He can't, and won't, bow before anyone except the One True God.
Haman takes this personally.
Arrogance blinds common sense.
You'd think he would say to himself, What? One guy won't bow before me? Look at everything else I've gained, and everyone else who bows before me! I can't get excited by this one guy Mordecai's insolence.
Nope. Haman gets mad, and can't be grateful for everything he's got as long as there's this one holdout.
Arrogance also blinds you to astute observation.
I doubt Mordecai's refusal to bow was accompanied by body-language-level animosity. The text doesn't suggest anything one way or the other, but Mordecai doesn't seem the kind of guy whose refusal to comply would come from anything other than obedience to one's calling. I doubt it was accompanied by malice or scorn. He was probably well aware of the risk he was incurring.
LIkewise, I suspect there were many bowing dutifully who did so mockingly. It's quite possible to bow or curtsy as duty calls for, while conveying quite the opposite message. You bow just that little bit stiffly, or you bow with a sneer on your face, or with a slight smile that says, Sleep lightly, you bastard ...
Haman seems not to have noticed any of those. Only the one who refused to obey the letter of law without disrespect.
And then, it says in Esther chapter 3:6 ...
"Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes."
Eh?
What is THAT?
Where does that human urge come from?
I can see it in my own soul. Someone insults me, and I assume that it's not just them insulting me, but their entire people group? I'll make them all pay?
We can see this feature in the news nearly every day.
"The Lefties murdered Charlie Kirk!!!!"
No they didn't.
One isolated individual did, who appears (if the latet news is accurate) to have had only the slightest interest in politics, for that matter.
Yes, there are some "Lefties" celebrating disgustingly. But if you set your Rage aside for a moment, and go looking, you'll find lots of Lefties who are appalled by the murder AND the sickening celebration.
Do not assign guilt by association.