It was possible to bill last week’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference as a kind of anti-woke Davos, and many did. The sheer weight of personages and, apparently, money, put the event in a similar stratum. Representatives from venture capital and private equity had paid £1,500 each to be there. There were long, languid breaks between panels for ‘Networking’. There were branded notebooks and pens, as many as you could carry. Jimmy Carr circulated the hall with a knot of retainers.
But what ARC reminded me of more than anything else was another alpine conference: the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, in which the shaken remnants of Europe’s old order gathered to plan for the future after Napoleon’s defeat. For one, the whole thing had a decidedly central and eastern European tinge. Something like a plurality of the guests seemed to be from Poland, Germany or the Danubian basin – huge moustachioed men, each walking with the upright carriage of a hereditary officer. Clericalists abounded, of all shapes and sizes; cassocks, burning incense, long and pointed fur hats. The event was guarded, ushered, and superintended by a corps of what seemed to be Cossacks or Hungarian hussars, each smartly fitted out in a sort of Byronic poet’s shirt.
Present, too, was the same feeling of Metternichian despair, of the ultimate futility of their efforts. An impressive galère committed to some kind of political change in the Western world had assembled here, with considerable resources at their collective disposal. But no one seemed to take much heart from this. Even Jimmy Carr looked glum, and didn’t tell any jokes. There was a bit of a collective pall, and the closest thing I found to a salon wit or social lion there was Curtis Yarvin, otherwise known as Mencius Moldbug, the blogger and tech entrepreneur. Taking no active part in the conference, he instead wandered amiably around the hall, dispensing bits of social and historical apercus.
And this general gloom was borne out in the talks themselves. The unspoken assumption behind most of the headline speeches seemed to be that some kind of flight to the hills would eventually be necessary, and that these people were simply here to set out their stall for posterity.
This manifested itself in a few different ways. You could see it in the retreat to the realm of pure ideas – itself a form of quietism. Jordan Peterson opened the first panel with: “What is the difference between a Story and a Theory?” You could see it in the way that even the possibility of victory was never entertained; the schools, the universities, the bureaucracy, the corporate boards – all were in enemy hands, but this is something that was, time and again, described as a kind of meteorological event, like the rain, not something that had been accomplished by human wiles, and could be undone by the very same. Trump and Brexit, the two attempts to put some of these ARC ideas into practice, were hardly mentioned at all.
You could see it in the panel chaired by Niall Ferguson (whose usual bonhomie was gone), which, bizarrely, focused on foreign policy. This seemed like another wilful distraction. If the stakes are really this high for the Western world, then surely we can put the fate of the Taiwan Strait and the menace of TikTok on ice for now?
You could see it, worst of all, in how the proposed solutions were all personal, not political. Everything always seemed to boil down to some kind of Tolstoyan appeal. Again and again, it was suggested that the attendees should cultivate individual virtues; far less often was it suggested how the assembled might organise themselves for the capture and exercise of power. Day two of the conference began with an extended reflection on Christian forgiveness, which was followed by a musical number from Hamilton on the same idea. Peterson asked the audience to “meditate on what each of us can do” in their personal lives – a fine phrase, but somehow less compelling than Dominic Cummings’ or Trump ’25’s plans to simply fire all the bureaucrats. The best laid proposals were for ‘parallelism’ – that is to say, the founding and nurturing of parallel cultural institutions. But even this spoke to a certain narrowness of vision. What the clamour for new colleges and Sunday schools suggests, ultimately, is that the speakers at ARC hoped only to act as a frustrated appendage to woke society, like the English Dissenters.
For their part, the British delegation did not really rise to the level of events. In this hall the fate of the human race seemed to be at hand, but most of the British speakers kept translating everything back into the local vernacular of the Westminster Lobby. It was myopic and annoying. “Leveling Up”, “SW1”, “Whitehall”, “London-centric”, and – most wincingly – “Blue Labour”. These were all blandly dumped onto the stage with little explanation or introduction. How this audience of long-dispossessed Polish szlachta, Uniate clerics, and ‘Great Hungary’ revisionists were supposed to know what these terms meant was anyone’s guess. Michael Gove began his speech with a giggle about Cummings’ testimony to the Covid Inquiry (few sitting around me seemed to know who or what that was), before reading out a fairly standard Daily Telegraph leading article about the glories of the English constitution after 1689, and how these “Robust Institutions” could explain our present prosperity. He was followed by the patriarch of Duck Dynasty, the American reality show, who gave his predecessor a bemused glance as he quit the stage.
What also disheartened me slightly while listening to these speeches is how backwards the diagnosis tended to be. According to ARC, what has gone wrong with the Western world is a lack of moral purpose – absent strong “Judeo-Christian” values, nihilism, hedonism and, as milord Glasman put it, “atomisation”, beckons.
This simply won’t do. What is woke? It’s a series of unfalsifiable egalitarian moral ideas that you are not permitted to disagree with, and which are now encoded in national and international law. There is nothing languid or directionless to any of this at all; these ideas are enforced in deadly earnest, and the West’s governing classes are less relaxed about heterodoxy than at any time since the 17th century. Insofar as Western nations experience ‘anarchy’, then it is official anarchy – groups like Extinction Rebellion are protected by the courts and the police, whose emergent political function is to protect these provincial Ultras from the wider citizenry. Meanwhile, all Western nations are now signed up to a Net Zero political economy of degrowth and ruralisation. This isn’t hedonism at work here, but the twee asceticism of heat pumps and Solar Punk.
Jordan Peterson’s favourite novel is The Devils. In the book, the spur to narrative action is provided by a group of local nihilists, who mock the reigning social order and intrigue for its overthrow. For Peterson, this is the primordial battle, one that is now being waged on a global scale. This is certainly the case, but ARC’s position in this battle, properly understood, is that of the nihilists. The attendees at ARC are not the defenders of a moral consensus, but the enemies of an existing one. The house slogan of ARC was ‘The Better Story’ – well and good, but the “Better Story” requires first and foremost the destruction of the old one. This is something that demands a certain kind of nihilism, a willingness to declare that all reigning values are stupid, deadening and false. Hope for the future, sure, but never forgetting the value of pure, gleeful negation – which the present order of things can never assimilate.
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…for fuck’s sake.
“Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.”
If the child is a wolf, surely he or she should not be required to attend school?
So as a logical consequence, seeing any child can make this claim, compulsory schooling is de-facto abolished.
Compulsory schooling does not exist in the UK. But many children would benefit greatly from being “de-schooled”.
Not only that – wolves are pack animals, and it’s cruel to separate him from other wolves. He should be released into the wild in Canada, or at least sent to a zoo.
or in the Ukraine?
The only book they ever need to read will be “White Fang”.
Perhaps that was the child’s plan, then quietly to become human again once out, but not let on. But it hasn’t worked out. Kid thinks: “What do I do now?”
I consider this to be a very effective and successful move by the boy. He is following the principle of reductio ad absurdum. He rejects the whole “choose whatever gender you want to be today” mantra, and so is fighting fire with fire. He is saying, OK, let’s follow all this to its logical conclusion, and if the conclusion is absurd (my being a wolf), then the premise is false.
Good luck to him, I say.
I hope it’s like this, at least. Or the boy could indeed be well and truly disturbed and betrayed by all those figures of authority around him.
As with everything that’s well outside the parameters of what’s considered ‘normal behaviour’ I’d be straight away looking at the parents. I’d be asking what on earth this kid’s home life is like because this is where the parents have to step up and take responsibility. I’m all for kids being a bit crazy, testing the boundaries or acting in some eccentric way, because teenage years and high school life do come with their own specific set of stresses and challenges, but for crying out loud, if you’re going to cosplay being an animal then just make it a hobby, something that you do for fun outside of school. Anything else requires immediate psychiatric input before it escalates further.
Girfecoff?
I can’t make up my mind about this. Is this about a clever youngster taking the Micky out of idiot adults? Are we dealing with a disturbed child having a personal crisis? Or is it yet more sign of the disintegration of our civilisation?
Its possible, but more likely a fad that the modern socialist-progressive teaching mind has dangerously indulged. I remember a few kids around 11-12 a long time ago when I was a school kid, came up with this sort of make believe in school, were humoured or ignored and simply grew out of it.
The council knows exactly what they’re doing.
All part of the agenda to normalize bestiality.
Liberal progressivism is a virus and it is spreading all over the western world faster than covid on speed. One of its aspects is to turn every human behaviour, no matter how absurd into a malady, a condition or an illness and then categorise it and label it and then government and the NHS must spend time and money treating that absurdity. Once someone has been diagnosed, everyone else is supposed to blindly accept the nonsense, or they will likely get into all kinds trouble. —-This would all really be quite funny if it were not so pathetic.
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Let me guess: This is a vegan wolf?
Comment of the day.
A vegan wolf which identifies as a schoolboy
He could just identify as a werewolf, I suppose. Best of both worlds then. As long as he doesn’t try re-enacting some of the scenes from An American Werewolf In London ( which traumatized me when I was a kid. Special effects stood the test of time, though
) or even Dog Soldiers.
”Stick to the path, keep clear of the moors. Beware the full moon” I used to think werewolves really did exist for years after that.
They shouldn’t just allow it they should encourage it. In other cultures that child would be identified as a future shaman, an intercessor with other worlds. They should provide him with a pelt and a head dress at least. And try to make him understand that one day in times of dire need his service may be needed.
I have a lot of time for shamanism/shamanic practices but I’m not convinced a shaman would identify as a wolf (or any other species) rather than identifying as human and having the wolf as their spirit guide. I doubt this child has the faintest idea about shamanism so this is unlikely to be why they identify as a wolf unless, for reasons we don’t know, the wolf spirit has reached out to them.
I fully support this childs transition and suggest the following methodology;
Goes naked at all times
Is kept in an enclosure to keep it away from the children identifying as sheep
Is fed raw meat and or left to hunt own food
Is left to set own territorial boundaries by urination and defecation within it’s enclosure.
I suspect after a while it won’t be ‘lycan’ that lifestyle
Very good
I presume children who identify as wolves would soon drop the idea if they were only offered raw meat to eat.
You must remember that for a wolf child or a wolf man the moon is very important. Even for dogs they will behave differently when it is a full moon and some people as well. Nuture him and instruct him but let him obey his instincts and fulfil his destiny.
As a child, I identified as a wolf cub.
So tell the child-wolf that from now on its diet consists of raw meat it has hunted and killed itself.
And wait patiently until it demands human food …. about 6 hours, I would guess.
“……rather than being told to snap out of it and get to grips with themselves, which would be the common-sense approach.”
Exactly.
Oh what a “head slap” wouldn’t cure
“Doctor, doctor I think I’m a pair of curtains”
”Pull yourself together man”.
I used to be a werewolf but it’s all over “nowwwwwwwwwwwwww!
What is a Woke Wolf called?
Aware wolf.