fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Limits And Homonoia

The first limit we require is a geographical human limit to the interchangeability of identity. Individuals must reclaim coherent narratives of living, working, doing, and being, and master as close to a single self as may be afforded in a world which rewards parody, self-caricature, reinvention, and Protean Pelagianism. And groups of like-souled people — […]

The first limit we require is a geographical human limit to the interchangeability of identity. Individuals must reclaim coherent narratives of living, working, doing, and being, and master as close to a single self as may be afforded in a world which rewards parody, self-caricature, reinvention, and Protean Pelagianism. And groups of like-souled people — no, this is not a feint at predestination; I mean people who can more than stand to be around each other, can trust each others’ psyches — must be allowed to maintain geographically contiguous regions of local co-population. This is not a political program except insofar as it sets itself culturally against a political program. Probably only by the power of politics — that is, the acquisition and deployment of the monopoly on force — can cultural locality be succesfully destroyed. In so doing it applies political means to what are assuredly non-political ends: the first hallmark of the abuse of justice. ~James Poulos

The need for limits is paramount.  Limits serve to provide the coherence Mr. Poulos mentions.  Limits define what is our own, thus telling us what our business is that we should mind before anything else.  Cultivating homonoia, that oneness of mind of the “like-souled people,” inside those limits is the beginning of introducing some modicum of good order into the relations of the community.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here