Turn The Boat Around

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

It is universally agreed on the right that we need to change the culture. It is also universally agreed by most sane people that politics is downstream from culture. This falls under not giving orders that won’t be obeyed.

The part where I seem to be the voice screaming in the desert, to the point where I feel like … well me, twenty years ago screaming “We’re not at risk of population explosion. The population is probably already falling and we’re at great risk of population dearth!” is this: The culture is already changing, and for cultural change, it’s changing at a FAST clip. And it’s changing our way, at that.

Instead, every time I try to say this I’m met with screaming, fits, tantrums and destructive rages and assurances that no, we’re more broken than ever and the only solution is to burn it all down.

Right. So part of that — only hell itself who spawns them knows how large a part — this psyops agents for the other side. And by other side I mean foreign agents opposed to us and perhaps our very own entrenched, insane commies. Though if you want to believe the other side has a more theological dimension I’m certainly not going to stop you.

My response to that psyops is: if it were already lost they wouldn’t be shelling out for such a large fifty cent army to convince you to burn it all down. They’re evil and delusional, but not that stupid.

So, past the psyops, what is at work here? Why are people so despairing about changing the culture if I’m right and it’s already changing?

Because they don’t understand the breadth, the span and the limits of cultural change.

Look, I was born to a nautical culture. Not that I grew up by the seaside. I mean, we spent at least a month in summer going to the seaside every day for most of the day. This was considered (maybe still is, in Portugal) absolutely necessary if the child is to grow up even middling-healthy. The trip there, given the roads and transport available to us at the time was over an hour and sometimes over two. (Yes, there and back every day.) Now it’s fifteen minutes, to the point that it would be a practical way to live “by the sea” without spending too much money. Times change, in physical plant at least. But the area I came from still doesn’t consider itself seaside anything. The culture looks inward, towards land and farming and the closest they come to the sea is buying fish carcasses to fertilize the fields. This makes sense. The highway system has existed (to this extent) for less than 40 years. And almost universal car ownership for less than that.

Bear with me, this has a bearing! (And not exit pursued by a bear.)

However, all of Portuguese metaphors, culture and images is nautical. For obvious reasons.

So, when i think of turning a culture around I visualize turning a sizeable sail boat around. Under a certain technology and for a long time this was basically impossible. Not really, but it amounted to being impossible. At least if the wind were a certain way. Then tech was invented (I believe, though not my metier an arrangement of triangular sails) so one could tack against a contrary wind. And it became possible, but for large boats still difficult to do a you turn. It has to be done slowly and carefully lest it pitch us all in the drink.

Now imagine a boat the size of the US and all the minds in it, and cross winds and currents composed of all the countries (and enemies-domestic) who wish us ill.

It’s going to take time.

Normally culture takes a very, very long time to change. Things learned with mother’s milk are almost impossible to eradicate and the only thing that comes close is INDIVIDUAL immigration and acculturation. Even immigrating with your family slows that process. For an entire group of people… you have to wait for people to die is what it amounts to.

“But Sarah, they changed culture without waiting.” Are you sure about that? They’ve been at this, one way or another for 100 years. But to an extent you are right, as the last sixty years the changes have been lightening fast culture wise.

There’s two reasons for this: It’s not change so much as destroying which is different. Hold on, I’ll explain later.

Second: they had full control of innovative and pervasive CENTRALIZED tech and organizations that they controlled UTTERLY.

On the first: they weren’t actually aiming to build and replace, not after the first thrust was effectively defeated in WWII (because the thrust was eugenics, scientific government and control of industry and business by government, not the specific flavor. And granted it was defeated in varying amounts and not completely anywhere, though the US came closest.) What they were aiming was destroying current and old culture, so that the “new thing” could grow. All they really achieved, predictably, was the destruction part. Even then, this was only possible because the culture, even before what we’ll call for the sake of disambiguation the “progressive” project (which was left and right at least until Reagan really), was in massive crisis, still convulsing at the shock of easier transport and the full blooming of the industrial revolution. (Heck, it hadn’t fully recovered from the black plague. That’s how slowly culture changes.)

Thing is that culture changes very slow because assumptions get embedded everywhere from nursery rhymes to stories adults listen to, to LANGUAGE ITSELF. And that’s hard as heck to get out.

By that definition, we’re achieving turning the ship around at an almost unheard clip, even faster than the progressive project did.

The reasons for that are even more technological change that doesn’t accord with the centralized everything that the progressives used AND — very importantly — the fact their “change” was a hastily applied patch. They could force public and outward compliance, but all the stuff from the late 19th century remains in ferment underneath and returns in weird ways.

Now the patch is breaking we’re seeing crazy cake stuff, of course, because to the shock of the industrial revolution we have added more and spicy tech shock, so that people are all reeling and the culture hasn’t resolidified. This is why we see clever fools arguing for monarchy, which culturally speaking is like a twelve year old becoming so traumatized that they decide to un-potty-train themselves. We’ve done that sh*t before. Enough.

But there’s also, somehow, healthy culture coming back. Or perhaps it never left, just was afraid to show itself. Underneath it all, people generally speaking have their head on straight, far more than you see in the visible parts of the culture. (Visible because they scream, cry and throw themselves on the floor, or threaten others.)

So why are those, shall we call them institutional? parts of the culture not only so broken but so resistant to being kintsugied?

Well… it’s the culture thing. In this case institutional and workplace and specialty culture.

In a time when our education institutions taught almost nothing practical, the repository of “how to do things” is almost exclusively “learned by doing” which means my generation (roughly X, okay) and older are the ones holding the keys to “it’s done this way.”

These are also the people that are most unwilling or unable to see who things have changed and that the progressive project has failed everywhere. PARTICULARLY in the fields that were wholly taken over by the left to the point that people were promoted on ideology rather than competence. And yet they still have some competence…

Let me explain: All of us are sick and tired of things that Amazon does and youtube does, not counting the funny gals over at netflix and such.

BUT what they do is absolutely predictable and will only be resolved by time and replacements.

Or put it another way: When Jeff Bezos created some kind of video/tv/movie dpt for Amazon, who could he hire? Well, people who had come up through the system in such fields. The only way to be sure they knew what to do ws to go to the heads. And of course, those were ideologically chosen and so– the new thing was as lefty as the old.

Same for who he put in charge of the book division, which is why they’re favoring trad pub, and say that ebooks have hit a natural ceiling. (Screams in “it’s all so tiresome.”)

When you guys rage against Amazon and I say “they’re not that bad’ I’m not saying they’re NOT bad. I’m saying they’re the best of the field. Because they all hire from the same tainted pool.

This will change. BUT the change takes time.

At the speed of filling graves? Maybe. In this case I think it will be faster as it’s becoming obvious even to those who wish to be blind that expertise in the field as used to be doesn’t have anything to do with the field as is.

And AI animation is about to kick the entire process into turbo by making every guy with time and a computer a movie maker.

I suspect it’s the same for almost everything including even stuff like manufacturing, which in turn will change the process of innovation, because if you can build a better gizmo in your garage and compete with the big boys, chances are a few million people will.

And culture will change, or at least back away from the progressivist nonsense. It will, of course, find other nonsense. And there’s still the problem of potty training all those monarchists again.

However, things are going our way. Just slower than any of us will like, but that’s the way life is.

Cultural boats turn around very slowly. Particularly in crosswinds. Mind the tiller and take care not to fall into the drink.

Steady as she goes.

24 thoughts on “Turn The Boat Around”

  2. Young people’s tendency at Catholic Mass in Manhattan is way up. Number two son says a lot of that is performative because they go to Saint Pat’s one of the really pretty churches, but I think it’s an interesting g datum.

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    1. In spite of what modern church design “experts” turn out, Catholics, as a general rule, prefer beautiful churches over ugly ones.

      Especially if they have a choice and an ugly church isn’t the only option for many miles.

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      1. Absolutely. I still miss Denver’s Cathedral. We used to do that for date afternoon/night on Saturday. Go to a museum or something, go to mass at the Cathedral, go to Pete’s for dinner where the Huns would meet us.
        If I had a time a time/space teleporting machine, we’d still be doing it.

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        1. Aye, I recall (but not fondly) the Danish Modernish design of the (pre-ELCA) ALC church we went to when I was in elementary/7th grade. After we switched to an LCA church (minister was far more interested in Selma, Alabama than $HOMETOWN parishioners, including ignoring the congregation’s treasurer (AKA, my father) when he was in hospital and later home bound with a heart attack.

          The LCA church was quite traditional, and beautiful. Alas, it got caught up in the ELCA mind-virus. Sigh. That’s a culture that will take a while to turn around. OTOH, the Friends (AKA Quaker) church in $TINY_TOWN collapsed and TPTB sold the property/building to an independent church. That one has its own problems, but it’s a start.

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    2. Seems to be up everywhere, TBH. And the girls are more likely to veil. I’m one of two old women who do.
      Why do I do it? Long story. But, you know, Grandma did is part of it. There’s comfort in that. And then I found out it makes a mind separation between the world and church. And — well, that. It also helps with ADD.

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      1. That last isn’t something that’s a minor thing. I think a lot of the younger generation are starting to see the value of things older generations discarded without understanding why it was there. Will we start to see a lot of disorders fade if we readopt some of the old ways? I wouldn’t be shocked in the slightest.

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        1. I’m seeing more multi-child (2+) families in the church where I sing. I’m also seeing more women in skirts, longer skirts, at worship and out and about. One swallow does not a summer make, but given how popular the old hymns are (and how many were kept in the new-denomination hymnal, with original words), I’d say the ship is reversing. Too, when this church left the older denomination, it was mostly 50s+ who stayed with the “liberal” branch, not the younger families and under 50s.

          People visit because of the attractiveness of the worship area, the music program, and the traditional liturgy, then stay for other reasons.

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          1. There’s a quote that could be by Mark Steyn: “The future belongs to those who show up.” The groups de-futurizing themselves for various reasons will only matter if their memetic colonization strategy allows them to continue to replicate into young minds full of mush in the ivory towers of academe. But it appears those ivory towers are crumbling, and even with their aggressive proselytization, some of the yout are shedding their memetic chains on their own, finding like minded mates, and pursuing real life goals like a family with kids.

            The counter-counter-revolutionaries are what one sees all over the tok-of-tik and similar social media venues, insisting that all is well with the girlboss revolution, and to ignore the flames climbing the stage curtains and remain in your seats. But it appears the audience is already sneaking out the side doors.

            I am overall optimistic.

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    3. I grew up in a really beautiful parish church and have been a member of some truly stunning ones — look up Arundel Cathedral if you have a minute. The current parish, where we’ve been for 20 years now is a 1960’s ski lodge and the construction was not for the ages so maintenance is expensive and extensive. On the other hand, we’ve had a good run of pastors and the current one is excellent. They keep to the canons of the Mass with none of the nonsense that has kept in at other parishes, No dancing nuns or pagan idols on the altar like Frankie did in Rome. The music is dire, of course, with lots of Hagn Haas St Louis Jesuit dreck sung in odd keys at dirge like tempo, but one can’t have everything. No singing at the early mass, so I go to that one.

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  3. Sailing thing:

    The innovation was being able to sail kinda close enough towards the direction the wind was coming from such that one could, by careful manipulation of sails and lots of shouted nautical commands and crew pulling on lines, turn by pointing the boat more towards the wind, and then yet more right through pointing directly up wind, and so on, so eventually the boat was sailing kinda towards the wind on the opposite tack, with the wind coming across the other side of the boat. The older square sails could sort of sail a little towards the wind, but were a lot trickier to turn through the wind, so the standard practice was basically turn the wrong way around.

    Say if the wind was from the north, you wanted to proceed to the north, and your amphorae-laden cargo boat was sailing kinda just north of east, but there was an inconsiderate Greek island in front of of you so you had to turn. You could not turn left on sails as those sails and rig were not invented yet, so you would either take down the sail and break out the oars to turn (“Row faster, cubical H1B minions… er, galley slaves! Time is money!”) or if you were too cheap to pay for galley slaves, you would turn right the long way around, through pointing southeast then south, then southwest then just a bit north of due west to make port at Salona.

    By the 15th through 18th century “age of sail” this long way round turn, known as “wearing” as contrasted by turning through the wind, or “tacking,” was looked down upon as “lubberly” indicating lack of sailing skill.

    Nice explainer article at https://thetidesofhistory.com/2021/02/21/tacking-and-wearing-jibing/

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  4. On the first: they weren’t actually aiming to build and replace, not after the first thrust was effectively defeated in WWII (because the thrust was eugenics, scientific government and control of industry and business by government, not the specific flavor. And granted it was defeated in varying amounts and not completely anywhere, though the US came closest.)

    There’s a lot here, and much of it deserves (at least) a little more attention, so…

    Eugenics and scientific government basically boils down to the same thing; a sort of technocracy style fascism, where some “elite” well versed in the “science” makes all the decisions for everyone else. Because it’s more efficient, and better for everyone, or at least most everyone, and so forth.

    Note that “scientific” management of the time (for some flavors of it, I could name names) also is structured very much as a (techno-) feudalism; it’s critically important that “the workers” follow the plans of “the managment” exactly, precisely, without innovation or invention or improvement. The “engineer class” decides scientifically, the “worker class” executes obediently. The fascistic part is as much patterning governments after the “ideal” (cough!) company, as having the companies be directed and controlled by the government (French, dirigiste, fits perfectly).

    And the ultimate logical extension of all this is eugenics — “scientifically” improving not only the human species in general (for some technocratic values of “improve”) but “the worker class” in particular — the (industrial-age) masses had to do the masses of work, to keep society not just continuing but “improving” towards that “scientific” ideal — so why not breed them to purpose?

    And since this was based on allegedly-objective science, the underlying conceit (hope, ideal) was that eventually everyone — every town, every company, every industry, every country — would sort of converge on one “ideal” and “scientific” form of government. Note the “love-fest” I mentioned in the early days of the New Deal, between them and the Fascists / National Socialists in Europe, also with the Communists in Russia (see comments yesterday). This was more than a chance event, it was the expectation — maybe even leading naturally to a “scientific” world government. (See also H. G. Wells’ The World Set Free, supposedly; I still haven’t managed to read that one.)

    Fortunately for us (do I need to even mention how evil this was/is?) the course and outcome of World War II pretty much demolished all that, though, as Our Esteemed Blogmistress also pointed out above, nowhere perfectly. (See the postwar “everything needs to be run by computer” ideas rattling around like rocks in a crankcase, for instance. Our AI-idolatry is only a weird echo of this.)

    But in many ways the “mere” fact of the war itself was their greatest and harshest defeat; rather than everyone “scientifically” evolving toward some sort of techno-fascistic “paradise” worldwide, instead various types of “scientific” progressives (FDR, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, though I’d leave out the neo-warlordism of Imperial Japan) used their modernism and efficiency to set about killing each other, using all the industrial machinery and “progressive” innovations (aerial bombing, war rockets, eventually the atomic bomb, though not World War I’s poison gases) against each other.

    Must have been a terrible disappointment — as if God Himself had shat on their cathedral before it was even half built. (Image courtesy of C. J. Jung, see his Memories, Dreams, Reflections.)

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  5. Limited space. Some culture can change on a dime. Blue hair and the absolute denial of reality are top level, visible culture. These are personal choices and can change quickly. But they overlay and respond to layers that change much more slowly.

    Woke is a response to these deeper layers, and a subconscious attempt to challenge them. It won’t work, because it relies on them for its very existence.

    In rather the same way that modern feminism relies on the existance of “the patriarchy” because without that structure it could not exist.

    The underlying cultural expectations change over thousands of years, if they change at all, because they’re just one level up from biology.

    Those who consider themselves elites have spent hundreds of years building structures that allow the ship to fight both tides and wind. Those structures are breaking, and when they snap the correction will be abrupt and complete.

    As we “turn the ship,” it’s going to correct much harder and faster than people expect, because it’s not moving away from the dominant culture, but toward it.

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    1. Yes. And it really is a good (if metaphorical) summary of wokerism to say it’s sailing closer and closer to directly upwind — which of course is the ideal, and never mind its nautical and physical impossibility, politics is the only bedrock reality and defiant wishing will make it so!

      Falling off that (ever more hazardous) course, maybe to a “broad reach” 45 degrees or so from directly downwind (IIRC best speed for “Guns and Sail” era square-riggers) won’t be instantaneous or even look very fast — but it will be faster than many expect, and it is where the ship wants to go.

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      1. Yes, that’s why the powers that be criminalize the opposition “far” right parties, and why the Democrats are absolutely going nuclear over only having citizens who actually show up vote. The craziness just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, but there’s a lot of inertia. Charlie Kirk was perfect for puncturing the invincible ignorance of the decent folks who bought into the propaganda. Trump has even come up with a very smart way of discouraging fraud by mail voting. I remember remarking back in 2020 to those who said there’s no federal control over elections that the Post Office is a federal entity. Trump has come up with the genius idea of giving all the post offices the list of actual citizens and reminding them that it is an existing federal crime to deliberately misdirect/mis-deliver the US mail.

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  6. To jump in the nautical metaphor boat … it’s really hard to be patient during maneuvers against the wind, and it involves a lot of time spent GOING THE WRONG WAY, or so it seems. For the hapless passengers, it looks nonsensical. Until they get a physics lesson or two. We are in the midst of a prolonged such maneuver during a hurricane. No wonder we’re seasick. And of course, there is the impervious horror of a lee shore inhabiting the backs of all of our brains, which makes it all the more nauseating. Hold fast!

    Apologies to all real sailors out there. I only know what i’ve read in books.

    As for the youngers trending traditional-ish … i had the shock of my life a couple weeks ago when my daughter mentioned that her fiance wants to have 5 kids. This is the one who had a list as long as her arm for not having children. “Suddenly” wants to have a family. We might survive!

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  7. Adding my two cents: https://everymancommentary.substack.com/p/barbarians-civilization-and-conviction. We’re clearing out the barbarians a bit at a time. But we need more hands and help, more education. Civilization needs people willing to fight for it – and willing to pull those who are barbarized but who want back into the fold out of the ocean and onboard.

    That part may take a lot more work. Heave ho, and away she goes!!!

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  8. I have detected the seeds of rebellion in my books:

    • Moral ambiguity over clean heroism: institutions fail; individuals choose
    • Competence respected: characters who prepare, adapt, and endure
    • Infrastructure as drama: control of fuel, air, data, and routes is control of civilization
    • Discovery is double-edged: every breakthrough brings a new threat
    • Human unity is earned, not assumed: cooperation is hard and precious
    • Optimist undercurrent: despite everything, humanity reaches
    • The test is always the same: can we cooperate, or do we fail like the others did?

    The books span humanity’s first push beyond Earth through deep-future interstellar civilizations. At every scale the same questions recur:
    • Who controls the truth?
    • Who has the right to govern?
    • What does humanity owe the future it is building?
    • What did the others who came before us get wrong?

    I misdoubt the Commissars will be happy with me…

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