The Shortest Non-Tweet You'll Probably Read Today
I’ve got an essay brewing, but it’s not done yet. What with all the running around and unpacking and used furniture transporting I’ve been doing for the past few weeks since we moved into the new place, my writing time is still very limited. And now, with Thanksgiving tomorrow, we’ve shifted over to “clearing the counters of boxes of old random crap we haven’t found a place for so we can cover them again in new random crap we also don’t have a place for so we can cook” mode.
My piece was going to begin with the brawl that broke out at the liquor store on Monday as I was shopping for holiday libations, and how the cashier told me she didn’t see what started it, but “people are just so angry all the time these days.” It was going to segue into Jordan Peterson’s insight that societies depend on mutually beneficial productive reciprocity, which likely gave rise to a psychological imperative for at least a basic ethical system. I even have some stuff about how fantasy sports has changed the behavior of the fans, making them much more emotionally invested and antagonistic.
In other words, something is brewing across cultural categories that is making us atomize, throw social conventions to the curb, and agitate towards chaos.
But it’s a big, heavy topic, and one I’m still searching for the right pieces to help bring a coherent picture together. And since you’re probably prepping for Thanksgiving today too, I’m going to take my time with it and do it later, and we can all try to think happier thoughts, with a heavy emphasis on the very gratitude that is arguably the strongest antidote to what ails us right now in the world.
So instead, I’m going to leave you with an entirely unrelated but extremely funny video about the way our brains treat us with total contempt. My wife and I laughed embarrassingly hard at this, this morning, and we needed that. I thought you might too.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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(Comments are on for everyone today.)
I am writing this on January 10, 2022. I am apparently too stupid to figure out how to send you a direct, private comment. I'm frustrated enough that I'm doing it this way. I am disappointed and feel a bit scammed that I subscribed to your substack. I did it when you were in the midst of an existential crisis and just before you left One Peter Five. (Full disclosure: I am not a Trad) What did I subscribe to? You don't even write anything. I follow you on social media but all I see there are angry comments about how much you hate traditional Catholics and lame attempts to appeal to others who have had similarly bad experiences with the Catholic Faith. I hope you can pull yourself together. I don't want my money back, but you might as well have run a GoFundMe; it would have been more honest.