
Rod Dreher's Monastic Vision - lermontov
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/rod-drehers-monastic-vision
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garethsprice
Dreher writes for The American Conservative
([http://www.theamericanconservative.com/](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/)),
a center-right publication which is a must-read in my media diet to get
coherent, well-reasoned essays from the other side of the political aisle.

I often find myself challenged by the viewpoints they put across, gaining
understanding of where people on the right are coming from intellectually, and
it's refreshing to get out of the filter bubble. Recommend reading through it,
especially if your news sources and environment tend to be more left-leaning.

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chris_st
And what do you recommend as "must-read in my media diet to get coherent,
well-reasoned essays from" from the left?

~~~
garethsprice
Jacobin [https://www.jacobinmag.com/](https://www.jacobinmag.com/) is good for
left-wing thinking.

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juliangamble
> It asks why there aren’t more places like St. Francisville—places where
> faith, family, and community form an integrated whole.

> Dreher’s answer is that nearly everything about the modern world conspires
> to eliminate them. He cites the Marxist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who
> coined the term “liquid modernity” to describe a way of life in which
> “change is so rapid that no social institutions have time to solidify.” The
> most successful people nowadays are flexible and rootless; they can live
> anywhere and believe anything. Dreher thinks that liquid modernity is a more
> or less unstoppable force—in part because capitalism and technology are
> unstoppable.

~~~
phreeza
> “I liken liquid modernity to the Great Flood of the Bible,” Dreher
> said,[...] “The flood cannot be turned back. The best we can do is construct
> arks within which we can ride it out, and by God’s grace make it across the
> dark sea of time to a future when we do find dry land again, and can start
> the rebuilding, reseeding, and renewal of the earth.”

That reminded me of the convents in Neal Stephensons 'Anathem'.

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eli_gottlieb
Except instead of useful math and pure science, it's supernatural religious
stuff.

~~~
philippnagel
Are there any scientific/tech-oriented intentional communities that are not
universities?

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huxley
They are rarer now than back in the 60s and 70s but PARC, Bell Labs, CERN etc
might be good examples.

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chrismealy
Dreher's problem is he's trying to find a good defense for bigotry, and there
are no good arguments for bigotry, so he ties himself up in knots.

