Those obsessed with appearing "normal" are usually the most disordered — souls unmoored from tradition desperately mimicking what the television or social media tells them is proper. They feel guilty not because they've violated actual social norms, but because they've failed to keep up with this month's approved opinions.
True normalcy comes from living in accordance with eternal order, not from anxiously checking whether your thoughts align with the latest progressive doctrine. The man secure in divine and natural law needs no validation from modern society's ever-shifting standards.
What they call "normal" is merely fashion; what we call normal is eternal.
True normalcy comes from living in accordance with eternal order, not from anxiously checking whether your thoughts align with the latest progressive doctrine. The man secure in divine and natural law needs no validation from modern society's ever-shifting standards.
What they call "normal" is merely fashion; what we call normal is eternal.
☃8
(((The Daily Poor)))
There's no such thing as a "human right," nerd.
Human rights? You mean those abstract universals that mysteriously emerged once we'd destroyed all concrete human bonds and obligations?
First, "positive rights" — universal claims that bind no one in particular. A medieval serf had no abstract "rights" but had a lord with concrete duties to protect him, feed him in famine, and ensure justice. Today's atomized individual has an endless list of theoretical entitlements but no one with any actual obligation to fulfill them. We traded specific duties between real people for universal claims that bind everyone (which means, in practice, no one).
Second, "negative rights" — the even more absurd notion that humans are naturally isolated atoms whose highest moral principle is leaving each other alone. As if we aren't born into families, communities, and obligations. As if a child has a "right to be left alone" rather than a role to be actively guided and formed by his parents and community.
"Human rights" are what remain when you strip away all real human relationships and duties. The father has obligations to his children, the lord to his subjects, the master to his apprentice — concrete bonds creating concrete responsibilities. But your modern rights? They're ghosts of duty haunting the ruins of proper order.
This is what happens when you replace divine hierarchy with enlightenment fairy tales. At least chains of duty bound people together. Your "rights" leave each man floating free — and alone. True freedom comes from fulfilling your proper role in the order of things, not from pretending you're a sovereign individual with either infinite claims on others or no obligations beyond non-interference.
"But Professor Poor, what about human dignity?" Indeed. What's more dignified: having real people with real obligations to protect and guide you, or having a piece of paper declaring your theoretical entitlements to an indifferent universe, populace, government, &c?
First, "positive rights" — universal claims that bind no one in particular. A medieval serf had no abstract "rights" but had a lord with concrete duties to protect him, feed him in famine, and ensure justice. Today's atomized individual has an endless list of theoretical entitlements but no one with any actual obligation to fulfill them. We traded specific duties between real people for universal claims that bind everyone (which means, in practice, no one).
Second, "negative rights" — the even more absurd notion that humans are naturally isolated atoms whose highest moral principle is leaving each other alone. As if we aren't born into families, communities, and obligations. As if a child has a "right to be left alone" rather than a role to be actively guided and formed by his parents and community.
"Human rights" are what remain when you strip away all real human relationships and duties. The father has obligations to his children, the lord to his subjects, the master to his apprentice — concrete bonds creating concrete responsibilities. But your modern rights? They're ghosts of duty haunting the ruins of proper order.
This is what happens when you replace divine hierarchy with enlightenment fairy tales. At least chains of duty bound people together. Your "rights" leave each man floating free — and alone. True freedom comes from fulfilling your proper role in the order of things, not from pretending you're a sovereign individual with either infinite claims on others or no obligations beyond non-interference.
"But Professor Poor, what about human dignity?" Indeed. What's more dignified: having real people with real obligations to protect and guide you, or having a piece of paper declaring your theoretical entitlements to an indifferent universe, populace, government, &c?
(((The Daily Poor)))
Human rights? You mean those abstract universals that mysteriously emerged once we'd destroyed all concrete human bonds and obligations? First, "positive rights" — universal claims that bind no one in particular. A medieval serf had no abstract "rights" but…
Epictetus comes to mind once more:
Appropriate actions are largely set by our social relationships. In the case of one’s father, this involves looking after him, letting him have his way in everything, and not making a fuss if he is abusive or violent. “But what if he’s a bad father? ” Do you think you have a natural affinity only to a good father? “No, just to a father.” Suppose your brother treats you badly. In that case, maintain your fraternal relationship to him. Don’t think about why he behaves that way but about what you need to do to keep your will in harmony with nature. No one else, in fact, will harm you without your consent; you will be harmed only when you think you are being harmed. So make a habit of studying your social relationships – with neighbors, citizens, or army officers – and then you will discover the appropriate thing to do.
My attention span doesn't let me watch things that are less than 20 minutes long or read things that fail to span multiple pages... When you post something that's very short, please attach to it a TS;DR that covers the same topic but in much greater detail as to allow me to properly engage with and absorb it.
(((The Daily Poor)))
My attention span doesn't let me watch things that are less than 20 minutes long or read things that fail to span multiple pages... When you post something that's very short, please attach to it a TS;DR that covers the same topic but in much greater detail…
TS;DR:
I find myself, in this digital age, to be rather like a gastric bypass patient whose surgery was performed in reverse — instead of being satisfied by small portions, I find myself physically incapable of extracting nourishment from intellectual snacks. It is a peculiar condition, and one that inverts everything our modern prophets believe about attention spans.
The modern world, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that attention spans are shrinking, that content must be brief, that the TL;DR reigns supreme. And yet! And yet here I stand, my mind rather like a sewage treatment plant that can only process industrial quantities — anything less simply backs up and creates a cognitive stink. I cannot abide brevity; I find in shortness itself a kind of intellectual constipation.
Let us pause to consider — with all the verbose luxury that my condition demands — the sheer magnificent absurdity of my requirement that content exceed twenty minutes, that reading span multiple pages. The prevailing wisdom would have us believe modern man requires his wisdom like fast food chicken nuggets: processed, uniform, and in bite-sized pieces. But my intellectual digestive system, like some mutant strain of academic tapeworm, demands feast after feast after feast.
The vast apparatus of content creators, social media mavens, and attention merchants has spent decades perfecting their intellectual baby food, pureeing complex thoughts into easily digestible pablum. They have constructed entire civilizations of abbreviated thought, vast empires of truncated wisdom. And here I sit, like a gourmand at a meal-replacement-shake convention, starving amidst their idea of plenty.
Consider the religious texts of old — hardly known for their brevity. Consider the great philosophical treatises, the epic poems, the novels that shaped civilizations. None of these came with a TL;DR. None of these could be adequately summarized in a tweet thread. The very notion would be like trying to perform brain surgery with a plastic spork — technically you're still penetrating the skull, but the result is just messy death.
And so I arrive at my grand conclusion, which is really more of a beginning: what if my condition — this pathological need for length, this obsessive requirement for depth — is not an aberration but a reminder? What if I represent not a failure to adapt to modern attention spans, but rather a living testament to what attention spans were meant to be? What if — and here I must pause for effect — the entire edifice of abbreviated modern content is itself the aberration, like a society that has convinced itself that licking a picture of a steak provides the same nutrition as eating one?
The modern attention merchant might suggest that my preference for length is mere contrarianism, the digital equivalent of demanding a seven-course meal at a hot dog stand. But perhaps the real confusion lies not in those who demand length, but in those who have convinced themselves that wisdom can be adequately conveyed in snippets — like trying to understand a feast by licking the grease off a discarded fast-food wrapper.
This is, of course, merely the beginning of my investigation into my own peculiar condition. We could spend volumes exploring the implications of this preference for the prolonged, this insistence on intellectual feasts rather than snacks. For in my very existence as an intellectual glutton, we find a mirror held up to our own assumptions about progress, about efficiency, about the very nature of how wisdom should be conveyed.
The answer to why my mind requires such length and depth will, naturally, take more than a few pages to properly explore. And that, as my condition dictates, is precisely as it should be. Thus, I beseech you, fellow creators of content: when you post something that's very short, please attach to it a TS;DR — a Too Short; Didn't Read — that covers the same topic in much greater detail.
I find myself, in this digital age, to be rather like a gastric bypass patient whose surgery was performed in reverse — instead of being satisfied by small portions, I find myself physically incapable of extracting nourishment from intellectual snacks. It is a peculiar condition, and one that inverts everything our modern prophets believe about attention spans.
The modern world, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that attention spans are shrinking, that content must be brief, that the TL;DR reigns supreme. And yet! And yet here I stand, my mind rather like a sewage treatment plant that can only process industrial quantities — anything less simply backs up and creates a cognitive stink. I cannot abide brevity; I find in shortness itself a kind of intellectual constipation.
Let us pause to consider — with all the verbose luxury that my condition demands — the sheer magnificent absurdity of my requirement that content exceed twenty minutes, that reading span multiple pages. The prevailing wisdom would have us believe modern man requires his wisdom like fast food chicken nuggets: processed, uniform, and in bite-sized pieces. But my intellectual digestive system, like some mutant strain of academic tapeworm, demands feast after feast after feast.
The vast apparatus of content creators, social media mavens, and attention merchants has spent decades perfecting their intellectual baby food, pureeing complex thoughts into easily digestible pablum. They have constructed entire civilizations of abbreviated thought, vast empires of truncated wisdom. And here I sit, like a gourmand at a meal-replacement-shake convention, starving amidst their idea of plenty.
Consider the religious texts of old — hardly known for their brevity. Consider the great philosophical treatises, the epic poems, the novels that shaped civilizations. None of these came with a TL;DR. None of these could be adequately summarized in a tweet thread. The very notion would be like trying to perform brain surgery with a plastic spork — technically you're still penetrating the skull, but the result is just messy death.
And so I arrive at my grand conclusion, which is really more of a beginning: what if my condition — this pathological need for length, this obsessive requirement for depth — is not an aberration but a reminder? What if I represent not a failure to adapt to modern attention spans, but rather a living testament to what attention spans were meant to be? What if — and here I must pause for effect — the entire edifice of abbreviated modern content is itself the aberration, like a society that has convinced itself that licking a picture of a steak provides the same nutrition as eating one?
The modern attention merchant might suggest that my preference for length is mere contrarianism, the digital equivalent of demanding a seven-course meal at a hot dog stand. But perhaps the real confusion lies not in those who demand length, but in those who have convinced themselves that wisdom can be adequately conveyed in snippets — like trying to understand a feast by licking the grease off a discarded fast-food wrapper.
This is, of course, merely the beginning of my investigation into my own peculiar condition. We could spend volumes exploring the implications of this preference for the prolonged, this insistence on intellectual feasts rather than snacks. For in my very existence as an intellectual glutton, we find a mirror held up to our own assumptions about progress, about efficiency, about the very nature of how wisdom should be conveyed.
The answer to why my mind requires such length and depth will, naturally, take more than a few pages to properly explore. And that, as my condition dictates, is precisely as it should be. Thus, I beseech you, fellow creators of content: when you post something that's very short, please attach to it a TS;DR — a Too Short; Didn't Read — that covers the same topic in much greater detail.
☃3
(((The Daily Poor)))
My attention span doesn't let me watch things that are less than 20 minutes long or read things that fail to span multiple pages... When you post something that's very short, please attach to it a TS;DR that covers the same topic but in much greater detail…
Think of it as leaving out a feast alongside your appetizer, that those of us cursed with this peculiar hunger might properly digest your ideas. Your brief thoughts may be tasty morsels, delicate hors d'oeuvres, but some of us aren't satisfied until we've digested the entire animal, entrails and all.
Reminder that "chaotic good" does not exist; that's just what evil calls itself when it's trying to rebrand its destruction as "revolution."