fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

In Praise Of Bohemian Conservatives

The belief that life is a mystery, not an argument; a poem, not a syllogism
IMG_6629

Ted McAllister speaks for me, and no doubt for other Kirkians. Excerpts:

[Materialism] is an intoxicating form of anti-intellectualism that parades as hard-headed rationalism. It is a close cousin to Christian Fundamentalism since both seek to reduce complex things to a simple, declaratory, unambiguous “fact.” Each of these intellectual habits seeks something certain, unambiguous, so as to get the intellectual assurance that eliminates the need for a spiritual journey that would encounter more mysteries than uncover certain answers.

And here we discover the essential aesthetic difference between bohemian conservatives and the intellectual and moral simplifiers: conservatives find the most profound meaning in mysteries. The goal is not to solve mysteries, but to enter into them fully and to see what wonders our dim faculties might apprehend. Across a room, a conservative might spy a sack of rapidly degenerating amino acids, but rather than thinking of the elements that make up the body he sees, he wonders about this creature’s past, its network of relationships, its relationship with books. The conservative might wonder if this creature could be his love someday—and when he wonders this he is fully aware that the creature before him is not “just” a sack of rapidly degenerating amino acids. During the love affair that may follow, the conservative might read all manner of books on attraction, on chemical changes in the brain that make lovers altogether crazed humans, and he may come to see that the experience of love has connections to evolved mechanisms of selection, but he will never allow the various parts of the explanation become sufficient—for his experience teaches him that love is a mystery—painful and glorious.

More:

At the risk of approaching a definition, a bohemian conservative believes humans ought to appreciate, live amidst, and even love the eccentric particularity of physical nature, of distinctive persons, of local culture, of odd traditions that reach back before memory, and more generally of the person rooted in time and place–a historical expression as unique as the proverbial snowflake. The bohemian conservative appreciates less the abstract beauty of the woman on the billboard and more the peculiar beauty of the woman who works at the diner. The bohemian conservative does not love the individualist as much as the eccentric person who is rooted in cultural soil unprocessed by sanitizing consumerism. The bohemian conservative admires the unique and peculiar over the abstracted perfection of a universal form.

The person, understood as a being rooted in history, culture, and tradition, is not any one thing. He isn’t defined by the composition of his body. He isn’t defined by his individual experiences. He isn’t defined by his accomplishments, or failings, or abilities, or limitations. The complexity of his person, as contextualized in a living culture, allows him to think of himself as physical and spiritual, as an individual and part of a group, as living in the flux of existence that is nonetheless situated in the timelessness of reality.

Read it all. 

Man, somebody ought to write a book. Oh, wait…

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now