
You Can’t Choose to Be Trad - jashkenas
https://fredrikdeboer.com/2020/01/17/you-cant-choose-to-be-trad/
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joenot443
Very interesting post. I'm curious for others' thoughts, because personally,
I've never encountered an individual like the one described in this article.

>To be honest, I suspect that for a lot of people who really suffer from these
kind of meta-theatrical problems of how to think and live, the real problem is
just the internet. They’re too online. The human mind was not meant to be
constantly rubbing up against other human minds. It’s all a big, creepy
science experiment, all of this operant conditioning; we did not evolve for
this. And rather than suddenly discovering conservative Anglicism, I suspect
some people would be more fulfilled if they just found the courage to delete
their Twitter. But for many people, I fear, to not be seen is to feel like
nothing at all.

Is the author strawmanning a bit here? Are there really many too-online-
Twitter-personalities turning to conservative Anglicism as a solution to their
growing existential dread?

I understand where the author is coming from, that abandoning postmodern
thought and embracing a premodern value system instead is in and of itself a
postmodern decision, I just don't think many people _are actually doing that._

~~~
levythe
Personally, I've seen a number of individuals (mostly Zoomers) upset by the
void of purpose left by the deliberate aimlessness of postmodernist thinking
turning to religion for answers. They can't articulate it like that, but they
have consistent things they mention that led them to this, "I've been told my
whole life to do what I want and I don't even know what I should want, let
alone what I do want." "I feel like I've lived my life just laying around
doing nothing, and now I feel like I suddenly woke up from a long sleep."
Outcry against cancel culture has similar subtext to it.

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crocodiletears
I believe that the author fundamentally misunderstands the apotheosis and
ongoing nature of the traditionalist mindset. In his description of, and
reasoning about traditionalism, he's attempted to understand it as an ill-
fitted treatment for the pathologies of the progressive commentariat (this is
especially obvious when he emphasizes the performativity of consciously
embracing traditionalist values, and conflates, trad with a paleo diet).

I do agree with him that oversocialization is a component of the mindset. But
he describes the adoption of traditionalist (Catholic) values as an attempt to
achieve some form of moral certitude in order to escape the judgement of one's
peers, the the fickle nature of the broader communal concensus.

This doesn't track with the traditionalists know, especially when he himself
admits that the religious component of it is almost certainly ironic, or an
aesthetic choice. The religious component may be percormatively observed, or
authetically observed. In either case, it serves as pre-existing standard base
from-which they rally that already broadly aligns with their values, and
extracts only minor concessions from them.

Traditionalists aren't especially concerned with how society writ large
percieves them, even when they're willing to acknowledge the subjectivity of
values. In fact, there is an assumption they bear that they are an anachronism
in an increasingly liberalizing world, even if they believe it's their duty to
push against it.

The traditionalist instead, fixates upon diminishing social capital, blaming
the individuization of morality, and anti-normative-value sentiment of the
predominant cultural narrative for society's woes.

They likely already held their principals long before they'd ever heard the
word "traditionalist". For them, traditionalism isn't an escape from
collective judgement (their beliefs are out of vogue, and will certainly be
the subject to judgement and ridicule). It is a label through-which to
collectivise, in order to hold one-another to account, and receive feedback
from those who share similar first principals to them (something progressives
don't do).

I'd like to expand on my points in a child comment, when I'm in a position

