What better day than Memorial Day to take some time and digest Jody Bottum's thought-provoking essay on "Death and Politics", in the latest First Things? (It's just the thing to kick back with after the barbecue ...)
« The Politics of '80s Comedy | Main | The Politics of '80s Comedy Revisited » Memento Mori27 May 2007 07:23 pm Comments (5)
What a strange, unconvincing essay. Bottum's claims "(1) The losses human beings suffer are the deepest reason for culture" and are not defended. And how could they be, with unanalyzed terms like "deepest" and "fundamental"? On what measure of depth does he think he's found "the deepest reason for culture"? I am a man with a young family, and with lots of friends with young families also. Thus we attend a lot of baby showers. When reading Bottum's essay, I found myself thinking that the proposition "The fundamental pattern for any community is a baby shower" was just as defensible, and would have quite different political consequences. For the resulting theory would not be in any way a defense of the politically unifying grief of our soldiers' sacrifices, as Bottum's seems to me to be. Instead, it would be an account of the debt of communities to the future. Certainly this would resonate with conservative thought, though not of the war-focused type. Is there a First Things message board where this article might be discussed in more detail? 
First Things is a neocon / neoliberal rag. No true conservative would give this neoliberal globalist rag the time of day. Neuhaus is in the pocket of La Raza and AIPAC. If you want real conservative opinion, see Chronicles Magazine, American Conservative, Middle American News, VDare, et al.
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Thought provoking indeed. But in a way it's self-undermining. Bottum's core insight--that death of other people is at the core of human culture and denying will result in denying our humanity--is deeply profound. But that's TOO profound--you can use that insight to get anywhere you want. It justifies Bottum's metaphysics, but it could just as easily justify the Stoics (maybe denying our humanity is a good idea? Why not be like angels? If the human condition is delusional, then escaping the human condition is good.). Metaphysics are worse than dangerous, they are inconsequential--to make a metaphor to Turing machines, a sufficiently deep metaphysics can get you anywhere any other metaphysics can get you.
Posted by Consumatopia | May 28, 2007 12:01 PM