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Best of Becoming Noble comments & responses: Vol. II

Below are some of the comments that this community has left on recent pieces. They really are quite provocative, and I recommend reading through them, and subscribing to the authors that you enjoy.

Though I may not agree with all of these comments, I appreciate the sophistication of the contributions.

My intent is to encourage our truly excellent readers to voice their opinions more, as I’ve found the quality of their thought to be excellent. I’ll do my best to continue highlighting your efforts to our - now thousands! - of readers.

Please pitch in! If you’re not clicking through the email to the comments, you’re missing out on the full Becoming Noble experience.

I’ve also turned on referrals. Anyone that causes someone new to subscribe by sharing, restacking, or inviting a friend will be featured on our leaderboard and can unlock free access to our premium tier. I really appreciate it!

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Sanfedisti

of

Position & Decision

:

…this is the exact problem that the Romans had with early Christians. It was not merely that they didn't worship the Roman pagan Pantheon - many newly assimilated groups took time in adjusting to that, and didn't worship for different lengths of time.

The real reason the Roman state hated Christians is that they functionally didn't recognize the authority of the Roman legal system. They paid lip service, but that was it. When a problem needed solving, they called the Pastor or the elders, or the Bishop. When two people quarrelled, they called a Priest. When community decisions needed to be made they were made by the Bishop, Priest or by the Parish. They never took one another to court, pressed civil charges, or called on the auxiliaries for legal remedy. They simply ignored the government entirely.

John Carter

of

Postcards From Barsoom

:

…academia is badly in need of replacing. We already have a loose network of scholars, philosophers, analysts, and so on who gather audiences online, but the system as of yet is entirely informal. Aside from signals such as follower counts on social media platforms, there is no indication of prestige. Furthermore, and I think more fundamentally, we don't yet have the ability to take on students ... instead, we simply have audiences, who enjoy our hot takes, but there is no transformative aspect to this.

In any case, I am imagining now a sort of sacred order, a networked society modelled perhaps on something like the Freemasons, with grades of initiation and rank, which weaves together independent businesses, scholars, and perhaps (why not?) even churches. I say initiation because there must be standards: to hold a given rank, one must have passed a test of one kind or another. Given the social conditions, standards of fitness are of course necessary. Standards of intellectual achievement might also be added. Standards of moral behaviour, of course, must be enforced throughout; crucially, I think, the moral standards especially must become more exacting the further one ascends in the hierarchy.

Heath Wharton

:

So much of our own power is drawn directly from the narrative that courses through our own minds, like the very lifeblood that animates us. Control the story in your own mind and then you control hope, faith, wealth, joy, and the roots of REAL power.

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Kadmilos

:

I very deeply relate to the inner tension you describe between pagano-Nietzschean vitalism and the Christian life. The attempt to reconcile the two is a perilous gamble; you feel your soul is at stake, daily. It seems fair to say that the saints of the early church, and to this day monastic spirituality, would renounce vitalism as puffed up and worldly delusions. You have people in that sphere literally saying stuff like: "You must be delusions maxxing." It's irony until it's not. (The real irony is that it doesn't go a step beyond postmodernism.) This is why I respect your attempt to bring back the criterion of truth into all of this, even if this must exist in tension with Nietzsche's dictum of "no facts, only interpretations." Are you suggesting the right invents rituals, rites, and liturgy other than those of the church? Should the right then seek to "create" a new religion (which seems to be BAP's idea), even if this religion should emerge organically? Or should the church rather be vitalized from within? The Orthodox in me rejects the first, of course, but also often smiles at the vanity of the latter. In all matters, the soul is thrown back on itself, its hidden motives, and it never survives scrutiny.

To which my response was:

I'm not suggesting the creation of a new religion, but I am suggesting that the Right should learn how to construct architectures of loyalty from religious institutions that have succeeded in doing so. The rituals these involve would not 'compete' with the Church, nor would they be anti-Christian in nature, but they would be cultural artifacts with a life of their own: think coming of age ceremonies, physical tests, pledges of allegiance, etc.

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John Merryman

of

John’s Substack

:

The reality is the system is proving its own worst enemy. What needs to be understood, is why.

When it's hundreds of millions and billions of people, it's not politics, sociology, or economics, so much as it's biology and physics.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.

Societies are the social energies propelling them on, as the civil and cultural forms give them structure. Liberal social energies, versus conservative cultural forms…

The problem is that we try to frame it monolithically, so each side sees themselves on the road to nirvana, while the other side is misinformed, if not evil.

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Heath Wharton

:

Your ending also hinted at something I have been considering lately - the erosion of both trust and vision in our day - and potential countermeasures. Have we gone so blind that we no longer perceive the myriad gardens and blessings that surround us anymore, in the form of good, but flawed, men and women?… We are certainly seeing the darkening of days, and yet, as you point out, it is hope that distinguishes the faithful. Jesus spit in the dirt and rubbed it in the blind man’s eyes in order to heal him. Perhaps we are all feeling the sting of saliva and grit right now - and after some darkness, clear vision and eternity. This is hope and from it... Northern courage.

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Stay in the fight dear friends.

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Sic transit imperium,

Johann