Some mixed signals today…

Biscay Orchards

Kitchen Chalk Talk • I do love a good quote juxtaposition

After some enjoyably heated beer-debate this afternoon, a friend reminded me of one of the simplest things: “It’s nice to agree and disagree on things with people you know.”

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The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer

• • •

“Vermeer” by Wisława Szymborska:

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.

Currently Reading: The Rigor of Angels by William Egginton 📚

Splendid, so far! I’m not sure how well this will follow Egginton’s narrative, but at several points I’ve been reminded of Jonathan Pageau’s 2014 post “Most of the Time the Earth Is Flat,” which was such a great source of conversation once upon a time.

It is not only the physical gesture of looking at the world through a machine that demonstrates the radical change, though this is symbolic enough, but it is the very fact that people would do that and come to the conclusion that what they saw through these machines was truer than how they experienced the world without them.

Though I’m hesitant to use this analogy, sometimes Substack subscriptions are like those surprise books I find on my shelf. Once in a while, something excellent pops up in the subscription feed that I don’t even remember subscribing to.

Like this one from Peco and Ruth Gaskovski, on the “flavors of faux history” in the digital world. And it justifies the analogy, because their ultimate advice is to start building your own library!

Finished reading: Being Consumed by William T. Cavanaugh 📚

So straight-forward and insightful. I figured before reading Cavanaugh’s new one I would read this little guy (100 pages), sitting on the shelf for who-knows-how-long. If I were a teacher and had students reading Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism, I would have them follow it up with this one for two reasons:

1. While I thoroughly endorse Zuboff’s book, I was disappointed by the scarcity of light, which Cavanaugh does not lack and which he points more convincingly and specifically toward.

2. While Zuboff’s is something of a tour de force, the gist of her argument is old — we have known and been collectively inexcusable for way too much and for way too long. Cavanaugh’s contains, in far fewer pages and in much simpler terms, the essential diagnosis — and it was written a decade earlier.

As Zuboff is at pains to communicate, the “free market” — to say nothing about the surveilled, manipulated and manipulating one — relies on our ignorance. (And we should add, it relies on a large amount of acedia.) Cavanaugh is at pains to say that we are usually asking the wrong question, and by doing so we also avoid the correct answers. The question is not “Is the market free?” but when and to what end?

“The crucial question is: When is a market free? In other words, how can we judge when any particular transaction is free? I reject the idea that a transaction is free just because it is not subject to state intervention or any other form of external coercion. We must give a fuller, more positive, account of freedom.”

Ultimately, in the economy that we face every single day, we have a choice about how we will relate to the world, to the things and the people in it, both the ones we see and the ones that we do not see. “Things do not have personalities of there own,” Cavanaugh writes, “but they are embedded in relationships of production and distribution that bring us into contact, for better or worse, with other people’s lives.”

In a very important sense, then — and especially for those of us who believe that every single person is made in the image of God, that all bring not only to “the market” but to the table of life, the communio personarum, their own inviolable experience with God — it does not matter if that contact is made in person or made through the disguise of “the market.” Whether it is a cashier across the checkout counter or a mango lady in Haiti, in each case, we participate in a human communion that requires more of us than an empty, rationalizing slogan called “free.”

Kevin Williamson was spot-on this morning.

As of this writing, Springfield’s schools had been closed for two days in a row—bomb threats. City hall was evacuated—bomb threat. Other municipal buildings—bomb threats. An elementary school—bomb threat. Two medical centers—bomb threats. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is on Truth Social posting images of kittens holding a sign reading: “Don’t let them eat us, vote for Trump!”

Do you know the most important word in that sentence? Them.

I’ve been particularly annoyed at the last week’s endless equivocation over our two bad choices. (“But Harris had the audicity to dodge questions! I wanted substance! She maybe-sort-of misquoted Trump and the moderators said nothing!”) Trump and Vance are regularly, shamelessly “bearing false witness against 15,000 poor and vulnerable people” (and, many, many more). And they do so with an astonishingly large endorsement — explicitly and silently — from a group of people who claim to be commanded, by none other than the Maker of the Universe, to bear no false witness against anyone. (“Thou shalt not revel in hateful bullshit” is my rough summary of Question 144 of the Westminster Larger Catechism.”)

Williamson actually traveled to Springfield for this one, and while he holds no punches for the two biggest assholes ever to seek office, he more importantly offers briefly, and smartly, both a narrow and wide context on the Haitian immigrants who live there. (Spoiler alert: they are good for Springfield — a fact which shouldn’t be surprising to the aforementioned group, whose Commander also “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the immigrant, giving him food and clothing.” Oh, and you know those “therefores” that folks love to hear “exposited” from the pulpit on Sunday. Here’s one for the ages: “Therefore, love the immigrant.”)

The whole thing is very, very much worth your time.

Our theory of change takes its cues from the garden, less the machine. We are personalists, not ideologues. We follow the logic of Jesus’s mustard seed, of yeast transforming a whole pile of dough, of the principle of contagiousness and change happening over generations. We believe in the value of slow thought. We are skeptical of the language of scale in growing spiritual goods. While we wish to be savvy in unmasking the either/or reactivity of our age and will always call out dehumanizing trendlines, we are fundamentally animated by the creative impulse, by a philosophy of natality expressed through hospitality.

A splendid manifesto from the new issue of Comment magazine that is worth your time and your energy. And as always, the editorial intro from Anne Snyder is as pitch-perfect as it is wise.