MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — I note, quickly, first, that I am indescribably grateful to Kara, Dan, and everyone at TAC for welcoming me to Post Right and, in particular, am thankful to my fellow contributors for tacitly acceding to the the potentially dangerous decision to permit me to join them. I heartily await what I have no doubt will be a splendid adventure in heterodoxy, replete with animated debate, open-mindedness generally lacking on both sides of the mainstream, and, one can hope, a few posts about professional wrestling, minor league baseball, and, maybe, from one of our British compatriots, cricket — but please, none of that soccer business! We all know that it’s little more than a cover for state-capitalist globalization!

Herewith, then, I present, as my introductory foray into Post Right (Am I posting on the Right, or have we reached beyond the increasing meaninglessness of “Left” and “Right”, at least without complicated qualification? You decide.), something I originally posted to my Weblog, Nathancontramundi, last July. Appropriate, I hope, given the diverse nature of this consortium and the presence of Mr. Dylan Hales, proprietor of The Left Conservative Weblog.

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I happened upon this interview a few years after its publication, after I had read Mailer’s The Armies of the Night: History As A Novel, The Novel as History, in Steven Affeldt’s Political and Constitutional Theory, a required course in my beloved Program of Liberal Studies, and had become incredibly intrigued by what Mailer called his left-conservatism. Now, in 1999, the editors at ISI, with the assistance of various consultants, compiled lists of the fifty worst and best books of the Twentieth Century; amongst the former, they list Armies, commenting, “Fact or fiction? Not even Mailer knew for sure.” I have no interest in debating the wisdom of this decision; their pithy remark, I think, has some validity. Nevertheless, I disbelieve that we should discount what merits this book possesses. Specifically, I wish to draw attention to a passage, which I many times have re-read, that has profoundly affected me since I first experienced this work in the fall of 2004.

[Mailer] had written for years about American architecture and its functional disease — that one could not tell the new colleges from the new prisons from the new hospitals from the new factories from the new airpots. Separate institutions were being replaced by one institution. Yes, and the irony was that this workhouse at Occoquan happened to be more agreeable architecturally than many a state university he had seen, or junior college. There was probably no impotence in all the world like knowing you were right and the wave of the world was wrong, and yet the wave came on. Floods of totalitarian architecture, totalitarian superhighways, totalitarian smog, totalitarian food (yes, frozen), totalitarian communications — the terror to a man so conservative as Mailer, was that nihilism might be the only answer to totalitarianism.

By happenstance, I found myself reading this passage, to a friend who, last evening, perused my humble book collection, as I’ve taken up reading both Wendell Berry’s The Art of the Commonplace and Wilhelm Röpke’s A Humane Economy. Linking the latter with the Mailer passage may require a bit of effort, but the parallels, I think, between Mailer and Berry’s philosophy are unmistakably clear, and absolutely crucial for us to understand. In short, Berry, I believe, offers, at least partially, a solution to the dis-eases catalogued here by the left-conservative Mailer. This “functional disease” and the totalitarianism arise resultant of our loss of connection with the earth and humanity; losing touch with who we are, losing our understanding of our place, we capitulate to the powers that our materialistic forms of “stress-relief” and contentment, to wit, consumerism and self-interest, create and re-enforce.

And here, I think, Röpke becomes particularly relevant. Government collusion — significant as its role has been — notwithstanding, this materialism, this rampant consumerism, undeniably, has served immeasurably to promote economic concentration. Just how powerful, I’ve pondered, could the Wal*Marts of the world be if no market existed for so many of the mass-produced, ostensibly needless gadgets, gizmos, toys, and whatnot that comprise the artifice wherewith we fill our spiritually drained lives? Drawing a connection between the dis-ease that permeates Berry’s lamentations and the totalitarianism that pressed Mailer toward nihilism, the perspicacious Swiss economist offers the following:

If we want to name a common denominator for the social disease of our times, then it is concentration, and collectivism and totalitarianism are merely the extreme and lethal stages of this disease.

[All emphasis mine - NPO.]

What, I think, we ought to gain from these passages specifically, and from the works of these three eminent modern thinkers more broadly, is a more profound cognizance of the relationship that links our own unwillingness to live according to an Aristotelian life of moderation; our “need” to consume, our refusal to plant roots, figuratively speaking, for whatever reason(s) guide us; and the nasty, pernicious results of our waywardness. Seeking solace in things, rather than true happiness in a life of interconnectedness in accord with God, the earth on which He has placed us, and our fellow men (and other aspects of Creation), we enable and perpetuate the Leviathans that control our lives, keep from us our liberty, and push us to the brink of nihilism.