Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Greats and Ungreats
For a long time I've been tired of conservative focus on a few Great Thinkers.
This essay by Bradley Bitzer hits the same old points.
In times of chaos, it’s profoundly necessary to remember those who have come before us and the innumerable sacrifices they made. Each of these great men, whatever his individual faults, sought to live according to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. They preserved, and they conserved.The best preservers of SKILLS, and the culture that surrounded the SKILLS, were guilds, Mutual Benefit Associations, and unions. Sometimes even governments, like the unique French preservation of semaphore skills in 1845. Too many of those Great Ones were part of the Deepstate of their time, whether the Roman Deepstate of 1000 AD, or the FBI/CIA Deepstate of 1950, or the Epstein Deepstate of 2020. In any era you have to be part of the inner elite to be widely published and remembered. The inner elite always has an evil motive. A few famous figures have pushed back the elite. Harding and FDR did it. Most of the conservative favorites were on the other side. I'm constantly trying to focus and magnify the thoughts and desires of the ungreat. Many of them didn't write books or make speeches; instead they taught or invented. Their desires and purposes come through in their patents and activities. There's a lot of purpose in a patent after you dig past the boilerplate. Three examples come to mind: Claude Chappe, Mary Jameson, Lucius Curtiss. There are billions of decent sane people in any era, most of whom deserve more credit than any of the greats or ungreats. But it's simply impossible to focus on them because they didn't leave any record at all. A few historians are trying to give them credit by writing semi-fictional stories about the ordinary peasants and parents of various eras. I don't have the skill for that work, so I'm focusing in the middle ground.
Labels: Patient people, Patient things, skill-estate
¶ 4:11 PM
