Gurwinder at The Prism links to the Oxytocin Paradox research
Oxytocin, the “love hormone”, can also make people spiteful. Cruelty is not simply the opposite of compassion, it’s often adjacent to it. For instance, the platform most dominated by “social justice” advocates—Bluesky—is also the one with the highest support for assassinations. Beware of those quick to show empathy, for they are often just as quick to show barbarity.
I had not heard this one before. Looking it up, it is not a traditional piece, it is written by them. The lady with the magic horn is likely to be Morgan Le Fey. The narrative isn't quite clear to me, and seems to be a pastiche of medieval-sounding legends about false maidens.
I have heard that the debate over when ENGLAND formally began has resurfaced. It is one of those issues - like the filioque clause - that most people say "Who cares?" while the remainder insist that it is absolutely vital.
I lean toward 954 myself. Aethelstan was the first to say he was King of all England and he did put most of the conquering or at least pacifying in place, and that was by 927. Everyone would sort of like it to be Aethelstan. More kingly, what? Even his grandfather King Alfred, even more beloved, preferred Aethelstan to his older brother. Aethelstan is undoubtedly a great Anglo-Saxon king. But did he get the collection of territories in various states of fealty over the finish line to get to the point that we say "There! Finally! That's the England we've been looking for!"
The other nominee is Eodred, who was sickly and uninspiring. He did drive a stake in the ground - almost like planting a flag - on the English Benedictine Reforms, which was seen at the time as a big deal of a display about unified England in the 900s, even though it is rather a "Wait, what?" topic in the 2000s.
Here are the weaknesses: Aethelstan had some controversy about whether he was a legitimate heir of Edward. His mother may have been a wife, may have been a concubine, and such distinctions often hinged on whether the king or the woman in question had technically been married before, or whether they had technically married before the birth of the child. If you think those are just matters of record-keeping and technicalities from an era completely unlike our own you might consider the early political career of Kamala Harris, of whom some would say "C'mon, no big deal," while others would say "Very big deal." Yet he survived that and was almost universally accepted. The bigger weakness is that the control of Northumbria slipped away right after he died and was not restored until later, under - you guessed it - King Eodred.
Eodred nudged it over the line. He gets the bouquet.
BTW, this is delaying a post on King Canute.
The following Chesterton quote came up for discussion at pub night while I was in Florida. I won't know until Thursday how it turned out, but no parties were hospitalised, for which we may all be thankful. There was puzzlement about what exactly GKC was driving at.
“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”
I have an advantage here because I have read CS Lewis's discussion of the matter, which is greatly clarifying. Chesterton fans will tell you that everything of Lewis is in Chesterton first. While that may be true, the Chesterton version is often less clear, at least to me.
One aspect (only one) of the above quote comes in those discussions of "the real meaning of Christmas (or Easter, Passover.)" Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen sang one little child, quite appropriately. Only when this is challenged does dogma start to be defined. "Well, Johnny, the chocolate eggs aren't strictly necessary and might even be a distraction. It's the Jesus risen part that's important." Once the distinction has been made we see that we could have Easter without chocolate eggs, but we couldn't have it without Jesus risen. We might not have apprehended that before. As things are taken away we see the core more clearly. The challenge has defined the doctrine. I wrote at greater length and I hope more poetically fifteen years ago in Festival Worship. Food and music are mentioned prominently.
We see that while we have gained something in terms of clarity in our religion, we have lost a great deal of fun and involvement when we separate out the (usually pagan) bits. The secular members of a post-religious society may want to keep the foods, the music, and the decorations and thus create new "real meanings" of Christmas or Passover. It's about family. It's about heritage. It's about Peace - meaning either pretty quietness or a political version of the term, not a biblical one. It's about giving. It's about poverty and refugees. These dogmas define a new and different religion because the tree ornaments can't do that. They define nothing, only celebrate it.
I don't say the new religions are entirely unrelated to the old one. They are usually clearly descended from it, taking one of the many doctrinal bits and making it central. That is where the clarity of dogma comes in. We wouldn't see - indeed we largely haven't seen - that a new religion has emerged if we focused only on the cookies and Santa songs. Memorial Day was about those who had died in battle, now it is about all who have died. Fourth of July and Veterans Day now join it in Generic Patriotic Day with Military Emphasis I-III. The celebrations alone cannot hold the holiday together, dogma is necessary or it erodes.
Yet put simply, dogma isn't as much fun, at least at first. We can't just enjoy the holiday anymore, we have to believe in it now that unbelief has become a possibility. Failing that, we have to find a new belief, a new dogma to attach to the celebration.
My brother sent some Wyman family history from the Revolutionary War. Menotomy is now called Arlington, and on the battle day of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, more people were killed in Menotomy than in the more celebrated towns. This was later in the day as the British were attempting to get back to Boston along the Battle Road, now Massachusetts Avenue. Militiamen from many towns positioned themselves along the road to harass the British. The video is a detailed description of the deaths on Jason Russell's property and in his house. It is also notable for the magnificent Coastal New England accent of the presenter. You should click through to hear a couple of minutes of her, anyway.
No Wymans are mentioned in that video because the Wyman who was killed in Menotomy, Jabez, met his end in Cooper's Tavern nearby, drinking with Mrs. Russell's cousin and sure that they had time to finish their "flip" before the British arrived. (They didn't.) All the Menotomy deaths were incredibly bloody. Other Wymans acquited themselves more admirably, that day and throughout the Revolution, mostly in the vicinity of Woburn, where the two Wyman brothers had originally settled in 1635. One Hezekiah Wyman was one of those legendary gray-haired men on a white horse that show up in old war stories, nicknamed "Death on a Pale Horse." I recognised as soon as I saw the names that they were not direct ancestors of mine and wondered how close they were. As it was 3-4 generations after the immigrant ancestor they could have been as far as fourth cousins to my line, which seems distant now.
Yet it probably didn't seem so then. If you ran into someone with the same surname they would almost certainly be a relative at that point, as the Great Migration was essentially 1625-45 and then stopped. It would usually take only a minute or so to ask about towns and grandparents to have a good idea where they fit in relation to you. Americans were exposed to many fewer people in their lifetimes then, which would make the connections even tighter. My ancestor Ephraim Wyman and family headed for Nova Scotia shortly before this, where the same process would be replicated. 140 years later around 1915, if you ran into a Wyman in Yarmouth County NS you would be certain it was a relative and likely able to nail it down pretty quickly. I don't think that process replicated nearly as well after that. 140 years ago would be 1886, and if your immigrant ancestors showed up then, they had a lot more America to move around in and could easily end up more that three towns away. If you ran into your somewhat-common surname you might be sure it was some kind of relative, but until quite recently your ability to track that down would be hampered.
I posted a link to the above title Revisited in my Links to Keep You Busy While I'm Gone last week. I kept the tab up because I keep grabbing quotes from it for replies in emails and on other sites. I have liked it so much that I was about to repost it just a week later, but realised I had not published the original by the same author at Unfashionable Truths, Edward Campbell The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea That Won't Die, which came out just after the election of Mamdani.
If socialism fails everywhere it’s tried, why does it keep coming back—even in rich societies that should know better? Because it appeals to emotion more than economics. It offers moral clarity in a messy world: victims and villains, righteous poor, evil billionaires. It turns resentment into righteousness and politics into redemption. For people disillusioned with complexity, it feels better to blame than to build.
It also sells the oldest illusion in politics—the promise of something for nothing. Socialism sounds like a “free lunch” because it hides the cost. It treats wealth as if it appears by magic, ready to be divided up. People want fairness, but they forget scarcity. Capitalism may be harsh, but it tells the truth: everything has a cost, and pretending otherwise doesn’t make it disappear.
Humorous in its cynicism and accuracy. But there are times when it is painful and frightening to watch.
Why are Intelligent People More Liberal? by Noah Carl at Aporia. I recommend the comments - including Noah's - over the article itself.
We tend to major in one of these categories and minor in another, neglecting the third. I am an ideas and people person - or the other way around. I am less interested in things and less good with them.
That this has a heritable component is hardly surprising: we tend to go into fields we are good at. A northern European study looks at choice of fields by individuals. Genetic Associations with Educational Fields. Yes there is a sex difference, but that is not the only thing happening.
One of the interesting bits in terms of studying ancient fossils with new techniques is that we have a bunch already, sitting around in museum drawers worldwide, often compromised by study techniques that did not anticipate modern DNA detection (like liking old bones to estimate how old they were). Now that we have been estimates for the age of Neanderthals, know that Denisovans existed, and are quite certain there are further ghost populations that did not survive as groups but contributed to our genetic hoard, trying to get information out of those teeth and bones is likely important. John Hawks talks about what's new and what's old new/new-old, and old - plus what we should be looking for.
Half a hominin mandible was discovered in 1969, which would draw archaeologists’ attention to this part of the quarry, where they found the cave. By 2011, teams had uncovered many stone tools and ancient animal remains from the ThI-GH sediments. Under the leadership of Jean-Paul Raynal they reported some isolated hominin teeth in 2012, and in 2016, they described a human femur shaft fragment that had been chewed by a large carnivore, likely a hyena.
Other hominin remains recovered in the excavations from before 2011 are reported in the new study by Hublin and coworkers. They include a complete mandible excavated in 2008, ThI-GH-10717, and a series of vertebrae found near it that may represent the same individual. They also include a small section of juvenile mandible and teeth, ThI-GH-10978.
Earl is at it again, but this time with a completed story rather than in progress. Fun. characters. Kiss the Frog.
From The Free Press by Arthur Brooks, a happiness researcher who turned his magnifying glass back on himself. Happiness Lessons From a Miserable Wretch. He was a statistics wonk as a professor of Citizenship and Public Affairs - you may know him from his work at the American Enterprise Institute or his several books. I commented on Who Really Cares in 2006.
Anger, stress, sadness, and worry have reached historic highs. Americans are increasingly “not too happy” about their lives. Young people are plagued with ever-rising rates of mental illness. We have become a whole nation of miserable, ungrateful wretches.
Why? The causes are complex. Among them: the decline of faith, marriage, childbearing, friendship, and meaningful careers; the mobile phones and apps that turned life into a simulation; the polarization fomented by political parties and exacerbated by the media; and the policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left a generation of Americans suffering from loneliness and isolation that may, for many, prove permanent.
Spoiler alert for his weekly column. Meaning figures prominently.
It includes reference to a few assessment and self-assessment tools, but in his teaching and journalistic like he is more focused on discussing the concepts. I find that I often rate myself higher in happiness when looked at globally, scoring something like an 8 out of 10 overall, but then rating individual aspects lower, at 6 or 7 with an occasional 9. It is likely related that in dark moods I rate myself a 5 or 6 overall, but the individual aspects remain somewhat stable with 6s or 7s punctuated by an occasional 4.
Classical Statues Were Not Painted Horribly at Works in Progress. The new colors may be accurate in terms of the scrapings detected, but they are flat and unsubtle. There is no reason to think that those who were so subtle in carving statues would be coarse and rudimentary in the painting of them. Shading and tone are more likely.
We visited Gatorland when we were in Florida. The girls liked going in to feed the birds and feeding chicken to the alligators. My wife liked reading about the albino and leucistic alligators. Part way along I noticed that the piped in music was very much old country style, very Tammy Wynette and George Jones, which is appropriate for a roadside attraction that started in 1949. I think this was the newest tune in the repertoire.
Back from Orlando, and got to see the Romanian sons and the women who love them. They got along better than I have ever seen. Chris and Maria landed in Miami on Jan 6, but SAS (Scandinavian Airline Systems) still hasn't got either sets of luggage to the US.
I continue to be embarrassed by how bad NH drivers are compared to other states I encounter. Florida has some jerks, just like everyone, but fewer. They do have slow reaction times when the light turns green, which I can't think of a reason for.
Universal Healthcare: The American Way Embracing free market solutions. It sounds great. I don't see who could sell the package without ceasing to be elected, though
Changing Norms to Fit The Narrative Tom Golden at Men Are Good, last of a four-part series on psychological research being bent to serve ideological needs. I had not heard of this particular inventory, but man, does it ring true.
Steve Stewart-Williams at NNN When Wokeness Kills. Links to the longer article by Megan McArdle
A Graveyard of Bad NYC Mayoral Narratives Musa al-Gharbi demonstrates that the narratives of both parties and sub-parties do not explain what was in. fact a banal election.
For those close enough to North Central MA, there is a Lenten study of The Return of the King at the CS Lewis Study Center in Feb-Mar on Wednesdays at 7. I may also go to the Thornton Wilder weekend conference in June. It surprised me to see it, because even though Wilder often uses Christian themes (especially in "The Skin of Our Teeth,") he is not usually regarded as a Christian writer. A bit heterodox at minimum. Outside the tent is more likely.
