re: Charlie Kirk Assassinated at Utah Valley University

I think you all have your fingers on the pulse of a real problem in today's society. Alienation and pessimism in young adults is very real. I’d suggest that underneath it lies an even deeper wound: the loss of a shared sense of purpose. The traditional rites of passage you mentioned worked not simply because they were dramatic transitions, but because they oriented young men toward a role and a core telos within their community. In modern society, we’ve largely dismantled the structures that once helped people orient their lives: family expectations (marriage and kids are increasingly not seen as central life goals and careers force us to continuously sever family relationships), community traditions, and even widely accepted narratives about what counts as a good life.

This is where I think Aristotelian notions of virtue, especially as retrieved by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, could be helpful. MacIntyre argues that we’ve inherited fragments of moral language without the coherent traditions that once gave them meaning. As a result, people end up oscillating between relativism and ungrounded dogmatism, never really knowing how to direct their energies toward a common good. For someone young, talented, and restless, that vacuum can be devastating and I can imagine they feel listless.

Reintroducing a sense of purpose doesn’t mean imposing rigid conformity, but it does mean recovering the idea that human life has ends proper to it: flourishing, excellence in practices, contribution to the community; that can order ambition and give structure to energy. Without that, alienation becomes inevitable, and destructive outlets more tempting.

In other words, I think you’re right that alienation is at the heart of our present crisis, but alienation itself is downstream of this deeper dislocation from purpose. And unless we can give young people something truly worth living (and even suffering) for, the “new American tragedy” you describe will only continue to play out.


I don't post on this message board much anymore ever since fatherhood claimed me, but I do still lurk. People have been very complementary in this thread so I figured I'd do the same specifically towards crazy4lsu. I think we'd end up having very different metaphysical groundings to our value systems and where they emerge and what we ought to do with them in the public sphere (I have issues with the Rawls/pragmatic school of thought you embraced earlier in this thread) but I don't think anyone can deny you are incredibly well versed on a variety of scientific, philosophical, and historical topics and your contributions to this board are a very welcome break from the tedium of what most of the internet offers.

the school district over from mine (KLEIN ISD) also fired a Coach/Teacher for publicly dancing on Charlie Kirk’s grave via Facebook.

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Yeah I’d say I’m at like a 5th grade reading level in that language

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men believing the world was crumbling around them, that the end result of the rapid industrialization was both decadence and decay, and had them seeking out alternative ideologies for what they argued was a failed world. The forbearers of fascism fomented in this era, but the reaction to ever increasing industrialization also resulted in the desire to start over again, which would be exemplified by the modernists, who after the 1st WW wanted to recreate the world from the ashes of the old.

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The rise of AI and the coming global technocratic movement is going to be insane

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In modern society, we’ve largely dismantled the structures that once helped people orient their lives: family expectations (marriage and kids are increasingly not seen as central life goals and careers force us to continuously sever family relationships), community traditions, even widely accepted narratives about what counts as a good life.

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Yes, there has been a fracturing that has been occurring, but I don't really understand where it is coming from or how to stop it. In some sense, we will eventually create something new, but I don't think we can underrate the degree to which technological change has made it extremely difficult to have a stable ground. The term in sociology I think is 'culture lag' where there are aspects of culture which cannot adapt to new technological norms. If we take that to be true, we also could be on the precipice of some large changes due to AI which might finish this fracturing.

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This is where I think Aristotelian notions of virtue, especially as retrieved by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, could be helpful. MacIntyre argues that we’ve inherited fragments of moral language without the coherent traditions that once gave them meaning. As a result, people end up oscillating between relativism and ungrounded dogmatism, never really knowing how to direct their energies toward a common good. For someone young, talented, and restless, that vacuum can be devastating and I can imagine they feel listless.

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Your the second person who has brought up MacIntyre in as many weeks. I need to read him. That sounds like a really astute observation on his part.

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Reintroducing a sense of purpose doesn’t mean imposing rigid conformity, but it does mean recovering the idea that human life has ends proper to it: flourishing, excellence in practices, contribution to the community; that can order ambition and give structure to energy. Without that, alienation becomes inevitable, and destructive outlets more tempting.

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I mean, I can imagine reintroducing this to young men in small groups, but society wide it would take some effort. I feel like a major undercurrent in this current nihilistic vein is that climate change is inevitable and thus the young feel 'future-less.'

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In other words, I think you’re right that alienation is at the heart of our present crisis, but alienation itself is downstream of this deeper dislocation from purpose. And unless we can give young people something truly worth living (and even suffering) for, the “new American tragedy” you describe will only continue to play out.

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It's hard to give something to people that you feel you might have only recently found yourself. It feels much more rare to see young men who have a clear sense of purpose from their teenage years. Lots of millennials and elder Gen Z might have only found that purpose relatively recently.

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People have been very complementary in this thread so I figured I'd do the same specifically towards crazy4lsu. I think we'd end up having very different metaphysical groundings to our value systems and where they emerge and what we ought to do with them in the public sphere (I have issues with the Rawls/pragmatic school of thought you embraced earlier in this thread) but I don't think anyone can deny you are incredibly well versed on a variety of scientific, philosophical, and historical topics and your contributions to this board is a very welcome break from the tedium of what most of the internet offers.

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Lol, let's not be hasty. I have spent a good part of the last four years being an obnoxious troll and only posting like I once did when I had time and energy. But having a daughter in the past year as well as seeing Kirk's death reminded me that there is still plenty of room for dialogue, if only to give my children a world where dialogue can still be meaningful.

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The rise of AI and the coming global technocratic movement is going to be insane

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With respect to AI, I might as well be a Luddite. But yeah, this new technocracy we seem to be developing is going to be interesting.

peej - this thread is all over the place already; so i gotta ask: give me a projection for the game tomorrow, what you got?

Is it true Charlie Kirk was wearing a bullet proof vest?

Sure… why not… the LSU defense is only gonna get better.