Saturday roundup

 An essay entitled "Three Cheers for Gradualism" at Persuasion (which, by the way, is a great site) merits wide discussion. It's taken from a new book by its authors, Greg Berman and Audrey Fox, entitled Gradual: The Case for Incrementalism in a Radical Age. The main point is that we would perhaps get more constructive stuff done if we weren't driven by grandiose ambition:

What are the alternatives to incremental reform? For some people, the answer is that government should do nothing. But even those who are completely satisfied with the status quo should recognize that change is inescapable. As Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, the Italian author of The Leopard, once wrote: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Others advance utopian schemes, such as prison or police abolition, that generate buzz on the internet but have almost no chance of real-world implementation.

But perhaps the most seductive alternative to gradual change is what Charles Lindblom, a political science professor at Yale and one of the leading theorists of incrementalism, called the “synoptic” approach, which seeks to fashion comprehensive solutions to problems, often driven by centralized planners. The fundamental weakness of this approach is that it requires access to high-quality information, agreement about underlying values, and effective decision-making on the part of government planners. In the real world, these conditions rarely, if ever, exist. Much more common are the opposite: bad data, furiously competing interests, and flawed decision makers subject to the same cognitive biases as the rest of us.

There are numerous advantages to gradual reform, in contrast to utopianism and comprehensive planning. Instead of pursuing broad, revolutionary change in a single master stroke, incrementalism focuses on addressing concrete problems in a piecemeal fashion. Following the scientific method, incremental reform allows for new ideas to be tested, evaluated, and honed over time.

Crucially, gradualists know how little they know. Anyone trying to understand a given problem these days is necessarily missing crucial information because there is simply too much information to process effectively. Gradualists acknowledge that, inevitably, errors happen. Building on this insight, an iterative, incremental process allows for each successive generation of reformers to learn from, and improve upon, their predecessors’ efforts.

Paul Kingsnorth's Substack The Abbey of Misrule is fast becoming a must-read for me.  His latest post there - and indeed, his overall output there - explores the same theme that drives my writing at Precipice: How long can the West be recognizably Western without a spiritual lodestar?

My readers will know, whether they want to or not, that over the last few years I have become an Orthodox Christian. This has, as it is designed to, re-orientated my entire worldview. I’m able to see things now that I couldn’t see before; and one of those things is that no society in human history, anywhere, has ever survived for any length of time without a religious core. 

I’ve circled back to this theme several times over the last couple of years, perhaps most directly in this essay. I think that every culture has a throne at its heart, on which sits its deity. We have dethroned the deity that built the West - that would be Christ - and you don’t have to be a Christian to understand that a culture with an empty throne at its heart is headed for a spiritual crisis, which will echo up through every aspect of its everyday life. This is where we are. 

I thought about this a few days ago as I read this new essay by Sebastian Milbank in The Critic magazine, exploring the implications of the end of Western Christendom. It’s worth a read whatever your beliefs. ‘Post-Christian Western civilisation,’ writes Milbank, ‘is increasingly unable to articulate what it believes in, ever more subservient to its direst foes and rivals, able to find moral purpose only in deconstructing its own ideals and achievements.’ He’s spot on. That ‘Christian civilisation’, though, is not coming back any time soon: so where does that leave us? And what of the faith that founded it, which so often today seems exhausted, corrupted or simply irrelevant? How should a Christian respond to the dangerous spiritual vacuum of the times?

I’ve attempted my own small version of an answer this week in a new essay in First Things magazine on the need for a ‘wild Christianity’. Followers of my essays here will have heard me say some of this before, and you can be sure I’ll be saying it again … but this is my most focused attempt so far to argue that in order to go forward we first need to go back: back to the roots (literally) of the old faith here in the West. Back before the might of medieval Rome, back before ‘Christendom’ and all of its worldly trappings. Back to the woods and the caves and the islands that formed the Christianity of the ‘green desert’ of the early warriors of the faith. 

At Nature and Grace (I'm sharing a lot of Substacks today, aren't I?),  Joel Carini reviews the book The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory by Abbigail Favale: 

Favale’s knowledge of the specific disciplines of sexuality and gender studies, philosophy, and theology, and her apt literary and mythological references reflect the fruit of the kind of bookish wisdom we partisans of the liberal arts continue to believe in.

Consider her reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses:

We are living in the Age of Pygmalion, that master artist from Ovid’s Metamorphoseswho wants a wife but despises real women. He picks up his hammer and chisel and constructs his ideal out of stone. He lusts after her; his image of woman is more desirable than the reality. In the original myth, Pygmalion wants to marry her, to bring her to his bed; in our time, Pygmalion wants to be her. Instead of a sculptor’s tools, he works with scalpel and syringe. Instead of stone, he carves his fantasy into his own flesh. (159)

I am speechless. We are living out errors that were adequately addressed and cautioned against by ancient mythology, and not only the secular public but even the Christian church is ignorant.

Natasha Crain lays out "7 Problems With the He Gets Us Campaign":

The Jesus of this campaign is nothing more than an inspiring human who relates to our problems and cares a whole lot about a culturally palatable version of social justice.

Some bracing findings from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life in a report entitled "From Swiping to Sexting: The Enduring Gender Divide in American Dating and Relationships":

The January 2023 American Perspectives Survey sheds some light on dating preferences, experiences, and perspectives. The national survey of more than 5,000 adults age 18 and older, including nearly 800 single adults, finds that Americans have strong dating preferences when it comes to living at home, being unemployed, and smoking. These are especially salient considerations for women. Politics is another important consideration for many Americans, especially committed partisans. Most Republicans and Democrats say they would be much less interested in dating those of the opposite political persuasion.

Dating practices that frequently grab headlines, such as ghosting and sexting, are not all that widespread, and, in the case of sexting, it may occur less frequently today. Generation Z is significantly less likely than millennials are to report sending sexually explicit images of themselves to someone they are dating.

The survey also finds that infidelity is a disquietingly common experience, especially for women. Nearly half of women say that a partner or spouse has been unfaithful, including more than six in 10 black women.

The new survey also reveals that, despite the growing popularity of online dating sites and apps, many users feel ambivalent about what they have to offer. Among the roughly one in four Americans who have ever used an online dating platform, experiences are mixed. Roughly as many users report a positive experience as a negative one. Women are especially critical of online dating, reporting significantly more negative experiences than men.

Even as online dating has made it easier than ever to become romantically involved with a complete stranger, younger Americans appear increasingly interested in dating people they already know. Young adults are more than twice as likely as seniors to report that they were friends with their partner or spouse before they started dating. Most older Americans say their spouse or partner was once a stranger.

The Rise of Single America

No social change has altered the fabric of American life so profoundly as the decline of marriage. In 2021, only about half of Americans, with slightly more men than women, report being married. The US Census Bureau reports a steady decline in marriage rates going back 50 years.[1]

Reasons for marriage’s decline abound. As professional opportunities for women grew over the past few decades, they became more financially independent, reducing the immediate economic necessity of marriage. Shifting views about gender roles and legal changes to divorce law also contributed. National economic disruptions that disproportionately affected working-class men have also been cited as a factor.[2] Additionally, growing suspicion of—and in some cases outright opposition to—traditional social arrangements among young adults may reduce interest in marriage. A rising number of young people raised by divorced parents may have contributed an overall feelings of skepticism about marriage as well.

Marriage is also facing increasing competition from other types of social arrangements such as cohabitation. The number of Americans cohabitating with their romantic partner has more than doubled over the past three decades.[3] It has become a widely accepted practice, particularly among younger Americans. Nearly six in 10 younger Americans report having cohabitated with a romantic partner.[4]

Nowhere is the decline of marriage more evident than in the lives of young adults. Overall, more than one in three Americans have never been married. Only 25 percent of younger adults (age 18 to 34) are currently married, a dramatic decline over the past few decades. In 1978, younger adults were almost twice as likely to be married (59 percent).[5]

Although more Americans today have never been married, many do not describe their relationship status as single. More than three in 10 (35 percent) Americans have never married, but only about one in five (21 percent) are currently single. What’s more, many Americans who have never married have been in committed relationships for years. Over half (53 percent) of Americans who have never been married and are currently living with their partner have been in the relationship for at least five years. Nearly one in three (32 percent) Americans living with their partner have been together for at least 10 years.

Another report full of bracing findings can be found at Nextgov. The title tells us much:  "Large Numbers of Americans Want a Strong, Rough, Anti-democratic Leader." A taste of what it reveals:

In our study, we asked about behaviors that foreshadow the early stages of democratic decline. For example, we asked citizens whether they thought that “the only way our country can solve its current problems is by supporting tough leaders who will crack down on those who undermine American values.” We also asked about explicit violations of democratic principles, like shutting down news organizations and “bending the rules to get things done.”

By design, some of these questions allow citizens to use their own interpretations of actions like “crackdowns” and “bending the rules.” These types of practices can take a number of different specific forms, as the cases of Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary illustrate. Our aim was to determine whether citizens were inclined toward leaders who seek power by promising retribution toward some groups and benefits for others, because this rhetorical strategy is often a precursor to explicit violations of democratic institutions.

Likewise, the phrasing of our questions is designed to allow respondents to rely on their own ideas about the meaning of “American values,” and “people like you.” Our interest was in what people would enable leaders to do to protect their idea of America and the Americans with whom they identify.

We found that people who want this type of protective but anti-democratic style of leadership were by far the most inclined to want leaders who would take uncompromising, decisive action. These people did not merely want their side to win a political competition for power. They were literally willing to say they would “bend the rules” to do it, a clear violation of the democratic ideal that everyone must follow the same rules.

For each item, we found that at least a third of the people we polled agreed or strongly agreed with these subtle or explicit violations of democratic norms. 

Here are my three most recent essays at Precipice. 

"The Part You Have To Do All On Your Own" is about the moment of reckoning, which is a moment of solitude. Your family, friends and church won't be standing beside you when you face your Creator.  

"And Then What?" considers what might happen when the dog finally catches the car - that is, when the progressive revolution is complete and all other worldviews are stomped into the dust. 

"All I Know Is That We'll Have to Lead With Love"  implores Christians to be candid about what effective evangelizing can possibly look like in a world that generally doesn't give a diddly about the Gospel message.