Nice essay, but wishful thinking at the end. They’re not just shouting over a cliff online or in a tailspin of decline. Rather, in the UK at least, they are continuing the long march through our institutions and laying waste to civil society. There seems little appetite from the elected government to turn the tide.
In Canada, unvaccinated healthcare workers are still unemployed, you still have to wear masks on planes, there are still travel restrictions, and in many areas, visits to loved ones in long term care are still verboten. There are rumours that full restrictions and universal masking will return in the fall. The fact that evidence has shown repeatedly that none of this works to slow the spread of the virus doesn’t seem to matter. I’d love to ignore and forget about these puritanical fools, but it’s hard to do so when they control the government and the media. We are forced to attend this church, unfortunately.
Canada does seem to be an extreme case, and appears to be ever more of an outlier. On the whole my life is back to normal. The British government for all its many faults deserves a little credit, as it was significantly better than most in its response (yes, it is a low bar!). We were always allowed out to exercise for example unlike the utterly cruel policies of France, Italy and Spain. In any case I am glad of those who (even quietly) repenteth of their lockdown sins; which includes now most other western countries. Surely we just can’t afford to do that again, whatever the ethical issues?
Of course there remain institutions (especially, but not only in the public sector) simply determined to carry on with the covid theatre – that will be one of the very long term costs, and it is a complete nonsense that you ‘need’ to show you have been vaccinated to board a plane or Eurostar train or plane, but not an actual negative covid test!
Yes, but the specific covid / pandemic power grab seems to have ben reversed almost everywhere in Europe at least and in Republican and even most Democratic states in the US. It is just too darned expensive for governments to carry on with lockdowns. I am usually a pessimist, but on this I am cautiously optimistic, despite the absurd hyping up of ‘monkeypox’, a disease seemingly of close physical proximity if not technically a STD, 97% of whose sufferers are gay men!
Penny Adrian
1 year ago
Seriously, Kat?
I don’t know what planet you & Rothman live on, but he had to go back 40 years to find feminists who objected to porn.
Feminists today shout the joys of “sex work” polyamory & BDSM from the rooftops.
If you want to have casual sex & revel in hookup culture, go for it.
No one is stopping you.
I hope you have loads of kinky anonymous sex and enjoy it rapturously.
Good for you!
But to slander people who’ve suffered from a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use & casual sex – usually poor & working class people whose lives have been harmed by addiction & sexual abuse – is just plain cruel.
The elite Left continues to celebrate hookup culture, limitless porn, drug use, and “wine moms”. They also “shout their abortions” claim that sex trafficking is a myth, and that “sex work is work”.
You clearly come from a privileged background that allowed you to have lots of risky “fun” without real consequences.
You are the elite Left, Kat – and so is Noah Rothman.
Yes, Kat’s articles frequently mix genuinely interesting insights with the boring, oft tread, and poorly reasoned arguments of the managerial elite.
Unfortunately, as you point out, she misses the real problem (both in this article and in her recent article defending the sexual Revolution) with celebrating unrestricted license. Not all desires are pro-social and not all will lead to flourishing, and only some people have the resources to rebound from the damage of indulging yourself and others without thought of the virtue of what you’re doing.
Certainly the bureaucratic solutions forwarded by Progressives and other modern forms of “Puritanism” are no help. But the answer to harms suffered is not to celebrate every passing whim as good. I suspect Kat doesn’t want to indulge this (to my mind) obvious truth because to do so would be to mark oneself with the “stain” of traditionalism, which is verboten in elite circles.
With respect Penny, there’s a double movement going on regarding progressive feminists and their attitudes to sex. A significant proportion have indeed long been very pro sex. But also quite a few are the opposite. Unherd’s own Julie Bendel is a strong example – unquestionably feminist and of the Left, but has always been strongly anti sex work, and at least historically (& I think still now) anti porn. In recent years, an increasing number of progressives have indeed shifted towards puritanism just like Kat suggests. That said, I’d sadly agree it’s to a degree an elite trait to be able to have lots of risky fun without consequence.
“But to slander people who’ve suffered from a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use & casual sex – usually poor & working class people whose lives have been harmed by addiction & sexual abuse – is just plain cruel.”
Addicts do not suffer from “a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use”, they just suffer from the drug use itself. Taboos on the use of drugs make no difference except possibly to make the addiction problem worse.
I disagree. Activists have been relentlessly normalizing drug use and the drug lifestyle. There is a reason we stigmatized drug use – it is a horrible thing to do to yourself – and once you are an addict you go on to a life of crime and to be a drag on the taxpayer.
This is really mostly nonsense. Addiction has got far worse as a social problem the more strict the legal prohibitions against drug use are. It may be true that activists and social commentators have been pushing for decriminalisation and normalisation more recently, but the explosion of addition itself correlates with the introduction of prohibition at the far earlier times of the mid-20th century.
And really, do all drugs users become addicts, and do all addicts become criminals? Rubbish. Stop reading the Daily Mail.
When you look like Kat, you can get away with a lot. I for one a 53-year old highly respected Paleontologist, still hornier than a 3-weinered rabbit in a bowling alley, find her smoking hot for a lib.
Not all feminists think exactly the same way! Isn’t Julie Bindel a feminist? She would certainly say so!
Lennon Ó Náraigh
1 year ago
Fusion restaurants are shuttered for the crime of cultural appropriation — which in many cases is not really about theft, but a lack of reverence for the culture in question.
The “crime” of cultural appropriation is a mob-style racket – you call out some artist / restaurant / novelist for their lack of “sensitivity” to that day’s particular celebrated cause, they get cancelled / closed down / rejected, you swoop in with your own “authentic” product and corner the market.
Cultural appropriation only goes one way, though, as I’ve seen a great number of appropriations of European cultural aspects (food, theatre, legends etc.) taken and re-vamped for a different context. For my own part, more power to their elbows, I have nothing against any appropriation, it only becomes objectionable if it is used to insult another party, and giving silly, juvenile names to sauces hardly qualifies as an insult.
Absolutely everything about this is a one-way street. “Whitewashing” is a cultural crime, but a black James Bond or female Ghostbusters? Right on!
This was perfectly illustrated a couple of years ago on a Canadian news article. An Indigenous millennial woman was being interviewed about the offensive use of First Nations garb as Halloween costumes. She would have had more of a point had she not have had dyed blonde hair and wearing the latest Lululemon outfit.
Happened here famously in Portland Oregon. Two white gals shut down their taco truck after being protested (by white people) for “stealing” recipes from Mexican families they had visited in Mexico – and thus ‘exploiting’ them. Easy to Google.
Indeed. The only country with no cultural appropriation is North Korea. Meanwhile, on behalf of my fellow Irishmen (and women), I apologize to the good indigenous peoples of South America for our cultural appropriation of the potato. My own ancestors who died in the potato famine would also have been similarly repentant for their shocking white privilege, if only they had survived the typhus/hunger/mass evictions.
Last edited 1 year ago by Lennon Ó Náraigh
Douglas H
1 year ago
I wish this article were right but it doesn’t address structural (i.e. widespread if not universal) issues of risk aversion and perceived legal liability that drive businesses and public bodies to impose super-cautious “safe” restrictions. That fear of legal and moral liability is the big driver of safetyism.
Judy Englander
1 year ago
In an interesting synchronicity, yesterday I read a very moving article about the erasure of fun from the Univ of Stanford campus (google ‘Stanford’s war on social life’). It tells the story of the closing of the frat and theme houses – communities created from the bottom up, places of anarchy, creativity, comradeship, nuttery and sheer joy – their houses clinically rebadged with letters and numbers and students allocated by a top down bureaucracy on the basis of ‘fairness’. It’s the triumph of po-faced administrators over spontaneous self-organisation.
I hope you read the article, harry. My comment doesn’t do justice to the issues it raises – particularly student isolation and anomie. The ‘cancellation’ of brotherhood/sisterhood and joy may explain why some have become so aggressive. The author claims that the suicide figures have increased since the frat and theme houses were closed.
My husband lived in a Russian House when he went there. Lots of theme parties, sounded really fun. There were French houses and Spanish etc.
Imagine getting into a nice school and not being able to have any fun? Lame.
Sophy T
1 year ago
Theres a piece in the Times today about the opposing views of JK Rowling and Joanne Harris which also mentions Philip Gwyn Jones from Picador and his Stalinist forced apology for pointing out the damage done by modern censorship ( an apology which didn’t save his job
I agree heartily with the various commenters who want to know who forced this apology from him and under what conditions. Maybe Unherd which is brave about taking on today’s censors could investigate it.
Andrew Raiment
1 year ago
Reminds me of the Lenny Bruce joke about Je5us.
“A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Chr1st?’ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, y’know”.
Cantab Man
1 year ago
Great article that speaks the truth, Kat. This is why rowdy Libertarians and Classic Liberals are making common cause with traditional conservatives who are the “deplorable” among us. All of these groups of folks see the danger of the Matriarchal push by radical progressives in power who would rather that we all be encompassed in bubble-wrap on the couch at home next to our mom rather than skinning a knee, roughhousing, or being offended by a verbal jousting match with someone who disagrees with us.
“The matriarchal push by progressives in power.” This is the syndrome which dare not speak its name – at least without censoring by the gatekeepers of speech. Women tend to err on the side of caution, since as child-carers for millennia, their first instinct is to control the environment in the name of protection. A prime example is Jessica Ardern of hermetically sealed NZ.
Rod Robertson
1 year ago
Excellent piece. Thanks.
John Riordan
1 year ago
Great article, and I dearly hope the concluding prediction comes to pass. In fact, I’m hoping the late 2020’s may become the same backlash we saw in the 1990’s and all the young people collectively say “F*** this” and go out partying. And no, they won’t be stopped because they can’t afford it: the early raves were the cheapest night you could possibly have back then: it was a fiver to get in, a tenner on ecstasy and you just drank water all night.
Anyway, one minor niggle here is that I think it’s somewhat sad that Puritans, at least the original ones, have been cast as history’s fun police in the modern imagination. I suspect that what Puritanism really was, in the beginning, was an adaptation serving the need to maintain society in the face of extraordinary hardship and want. It wasn’t that Puritans rejected joy and fun, it was that none was available without colossally damaging costs and therefore an alternate, ascetic mode of existence was required to prevent everyone collapsing out of boredom and despair.
That’s not to say that we aren’t afflicted in the modern age by joyless, humourless morons who instinctively hate the sight of other people living their lives freely: of course they exist and they are tedious and trying to a degree that is sometimes almost unbearable. But I think they deserve to be re-labelled something else: fascists is a possible candidate, though there may be better ones. Puritans, I maintain, isn’t the most accurate label.
What you say about the original Puritans is largely correct, although their mentality wasn’t all that different even back home in England (which presented them with other life-and-death problems). At any rate, the Puritans (who had enough sex to produce many children) didn’t go nearly as far as more ascetic communities such as the Shakers (who banned all sexual activity). And I doubt that we can explain those big Puritan families entirely by the need for labor and the high rate of infant mortality.
But why does no one, at least so far, leave any room at all for a world that promotes moderation–a mentality that’s neither mindless hedonism nor joyless asceticism?
And why does everyone assume that sex means nothing other than “fun.” It does mean that, of course, but it can also mean so much more than that. For some people, sex is a venue of holiness. For all people, until very recently, sex is has been the sine qua non of marriage and family life–ideally, that is, of enduring intimacy and communal continuity.
Reminiscent of a moment at the Clinton inaugural. As military jets flew in formation over the proceedings, then-leftist actor Ron Silver said “those are our planes now”.
Douglas Proudfoot
1 year ago
A group called Citizens for Sanity in the US has noticed that Progressive Puritans are ridicuous. They are buying billboard ads pointing the ridiculous positions out.
“Protect pregnant men from climate change.”
“Don’t let the radical right put our neighborhood street gangs behind bars.”
“Too much freedom is a bad thing. Get your IRS audit today.”
“Open the jails. Open the borders. Close the schools! Vote progressive!”
“If you don’t like being audited, you’re the problem.”
Progressive Puritans will be destroyed by their own internal contradictions, to borrow a phrase.
Human nature means the neo-puritans are bound to fail in the end as they always have in the past. Look at how the Cromwellian Commonwealth was succeeded by the Restoration and licentious society of Charles 2nd for instance..
laurence scaduto
1 year ago
Early in the pandemic they decided to close the beaches.
I was heartened (and amused) to see that, at least on the South Shore of Long Island, where I grew up and where my favorite beaches are, they were roundly ignored. Everyone went anyway.
So I’ve been wondering ever since, in how many places and situations was casual non-obedience the normal thing throughout? Were the progressive puritans failing all along while the big media outlets were telling everyone the opposite?
Vici C
1 year ago
Well, I do see puritanism but not in the same way. I see it in the minds of the population who are affronted enough by minor rule breaking and not very good lies, to oust a prime minister. It would have been a more appropriate reaction to sexual abuse, treason or massive fraud. Where I don’t see it is on the sexual scene. I wish I did because the present attitude to casual sex actually has demeaned it. Fun is not all about rule breaking, were it so the PM would still be here.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
We have a new commercial and political Pooteresque senior clerk line manager ruling class, overseeing the great majority of office ” keep yer’ nose” clean” worker ants behind computers, who have no freedom of speech or expression, not route of challenge in their daily lives, and will ” anything for a quiet life/ to keep my job”: is it any wonder that nu britn has turned into a giant version of head office of ” Leounge Settee Heoldings PLC”?
michael stanwick
1 year ago
But what is the grounding morality and emotion(s) that are the fuel within the puritanism?
“It is only the true believers who are left”
I suspect that it was always thus; unfortunately, they are also the ones with the squeaky wheel. And what’s that old saying about a squeaky wheel?
Last edited 1 year ago by 0 0
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Wowsers all.
The Gries
1 year ago
all puritans are doomed to fail!!….as they should ….they can only keep their lips pursed together and their assholes sucked up for so long….
Mark M Breza
1 year ago
Touché Kat you are on the zeitgeist & all the poo pop comments sure missed the uproar over all the Fun in Finland.
Mark M Breza
1 year ago
BTW
Why did Laura Hadeed censor me ?
She writes on Unheard also; does she take herself too seriously ?
Nice essay, but wishful thinking at the end. They’re not just shouting over a cliff online or in a tailspin of decline. Rather, in the UK at least, they are continuing the long march through our institutions and laying waste to civil society. There seems little appetite from the elected government to turn the tide.
Not just the UK, but throughout bureaucracies everywhere. Right down to council level and corporate HR.
And the Edinburgh Fringe.
Nothing is more subversive than laughter.
In Canada, unvaccinated healthcare workers are still unemployed, you still have to wear masks on planes, there are still travel restrictions, and in many areas, visits to loved ones in long term care are still verboten. There are rumours that full restrictions and universal masking will return in the fall. The fact that evidence has shown repeatedly that none of this works to slow the spread of the virus doesn’t seem to matter. I’d love to ignore and forget about these puritanical fools, but it’s hard to do so when they control the government and the media. We are forced to attend this church, unfortunately.
Canada does seem to be an extreme case, and appears to be ever more of an outlier. On the whole my life is back to normal. The British government for all its many faults deserves a little credit, as it was significantly better than most in its response (yes, it is a low bar!). We were always allowed out to exercise for example unlike the utterly cruel policies of France, Italy and Spain. In any case I am glad of those who (even quietly) repenteth of their lockdown sins; which includes now most other western countries. Surely we just can’t afford to do that again, whatever the ethical issues?
Of course there remain institutions (especially, but not only in the public sector) simply determined to carry on with the covid theatre – that will be one of the very long term costs, and it is a complete nonsense that you ‘need’ to show you have been vaccinated to board a plane or Eurostar train or plane, but not an actual negative covid test!
Yes, but the specific covid / pandemic power grab seems to have ben reversed almost everywhere in Europe at least and in Republican and even most Democratic states in the US. It is just too darned expensive for governments to carry on with lockdowns. I am usually a pessimist, but on this I am cautiously optimistic, despite the absurd hyping up of ‘monkeypox’, a disease seemingly of close physical proximity if not technically a STD, 97% of whose sufferers are gay men!
Seriously, Kat?
I don’t know what planet you & Rothman live on, but he had to go back 40 years to find feminists who objected to porn.
Feminists today shout the joys of “sex work” polyamory & BDSM from the rooftops.
If you want to have casual sex & revel in hookup culture, go for it.
No one is stopping you.
I hope you have loads of kinky anonymous sex and enjoy it rapturously.
Good for you!
But to slander people who’ve suffered from a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use & casual sex – usually poor & working class people whose lives have been harmed by addiction & sexual abuse – is just plain cruel.
The elite Left continues to celebrate hookup culture, limitless porn, drug use, and “wine moms”. They also “shout their abortions” claim that sex trafficking is a myth, and that “sex work is work”.
You clearly come from a privileged background that allowed you to have lots of risky “fun” without real consequences.
You are the elite Left, Kat – and so is Noah Rothman.
Yes, Kat’s articles frequently mix genuinely interesting insights with the boring, oft tread, and poorly reasoned arguments of the managerial elite.
Unfortunately, as you point out, she misses the real problem (both in this article and in her recent article defending the sexual Revolution) with celebrating unrestricted license. Not all desires are pro-social and not all will lead to flourishing, and only some people have the resources to rebound from the damage of indulging yourself and others without thought of the virtue of what you’re doing.
Certainly the bureaucratic solutions forwarded by Progressives and other modern forms of “Puritanism” are no help. But the answer to harms suffered is not to celebrate every passing whim as good. I suspect Kat doesn’t want to indulge this (to my mind) obvious truth because to do so would be to mark oneself with the “stain” of traditionalism, which is verboten in elite circles.
With respect Penny, there’s a double movement going on regarding progressive feminists and their attitudes to sex. A significant proportion have indeed long been very pro sex. But also quite a few are the opposite. Unherd’s own Julie Bendel is a strong example – unquestionably feminist and of the Left, but has always been strongly anti sex work, and at least historically (& I think still now) anti porn. In recent years, an increasing number of progressives have indeed shifted towards puritanism just like Kat suggests. That said, I’d sadly agree it’s to a degree an elite trait to be able to have lots of risky fun without consequence.
“But to slander people who’ve suffered from a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use & casual sex – usually poor & working class people whose lives have been harmed by addiction & sexual abuse – is just plain cruel.”
Addicts do not suffer from “a lack of cultural guard rails around drug use”, they just suffer from the drug use itself. Taboos on the use of drugs make no difference except possibly to make the addiction problem worse.
I disagree. Activists have been relentlessly normalizing drug use and the drug lifestyle. There is a reason we stigmatized drug use – it is a horrible thing to do to yourself – and once you are an addict you go on to a life of crime and to be a drag on the taxpayer.
This is really mostly nonsense. Addiction has got far worse as a social problem the more strict the legal prohibitions against drug use are. It may be true that activists and social commentators have been pushing for decriminalisation and normalisation more recently, but the explosion of addition itself correlates with the introduction of prohibition at the far earlier times of the mid-20th century.
And really, do all drugs users become addicts, and do all addicts become criminals? Rubbish. Stop reading the Daily Mail.
Look at Portland and San Francisco, who is now shutting down open air drug markets in an effort to lower crime.
Don’t put all feminists in the same basket b/c we are not a monolith and have differing opinions about this and other topics.
If you’re the guy involved, get a signed consent form, dated ad time stamped, particularly on campus.
A killjoy of the earlier stripe.
When you look like Kat, you can get away with a lot. I for one a 53-year old highly respected Paleontologist, still hornier than a 3-weinered rabbit in a bowling alley, find her smoking hot for a lib.
Not all feminists think exactly the same way! Isn’t Julie Bindel a feminist? She would certainly say so!
The “crime” of cultural appropriation is a mob-style racket – you call out some artist / restaurant / novelist for their lack of “sensitivity” to that day’s particular celebrated cause, they get cancelled / closed down / rejected, you swoop in with your own “authentic” product and corner the market.
Cultural appropriation only goes one way, though, as I’ve seen a great number of appropriations of European cultural aspects (food, theatre, legends etc.) taken and re-vamped for a different context. For my own part, more power to their elbows, I have nothing against any appropriation, it only becomes objectionable if it is used to insult another party, and giving silly, juvenile names to sauces hardly qualifies as an insult.
the word ” culture” is so misused: it now means ‘ lack of any actual culture whatsoever”..
See Hamilton, with all Bipoc cast for historically white figures.
I find it increasingly distracting to see black actors stuck randomly in everything, a favorite being Viking stories…sigh
Absolutely everything about this is a one-way street. “Whitewashing” is a cultural crime, but a black James Bond or female Ghostbusters? Right on!
This was perfectly illustrated a couple of years ago on a Canadian news article. An Indigenous millennial woman was being interviewed about the offensive use of First Nations garb as Halloween costumes. She would have had more of a point had she not have had dyed blonde hair and wearing the latest Lululemon outfit.
I’ve not heard of fusion restaurants being shut down for cultural appropriation. I think they close because their food is poor quality.
Happened here famously in Portland Oregon. Two white gals shut down their taco truck after being protested (by white people) for “stealing” recipes from Mexican families they had visited in Mexico – and thus ‘exploiting’ them. Easy to Google.
Two young women I know set up on the beach selling chocolate covered frozen bananas. Does that count?
They made a bundle!
I had a very buxom friend who in the seventies sold melons topless on the beach in the south of France. Her melons were much in demand.
now with LBGT she would have to be accompanied by a man, bottomless, selling pineapple, or in French ananas?…
You can have a multicultural society, or you can have the concept of cultural appropriation. You can’t have both.
It’s still rock and roll to me.
Indeed. The only country with no cultural appropriation is North Korea. Meanwhile, on behalf of my fellow Irishmen (and women), I apologize to the good indigenous peoples of South America for our cultural appropriation of the potato. My own ancestors who died in the potato famine would also have been similarly repentant for their shocking white privilege, if only they had survived the typhus/hunger/mass evictions.
I wish this article were right but it doesn’t address structural (i.e. widespread if not universal) issues of risk aversion and perceived legal liability that drive businesses and public bodies to impose super-cautious “safe” restrictions. That fear of legal and moral liability is the big driver of safetyism.
In an interesting synchronicity, yesterday I read a very moving article about the erasure of fun from the Univ of Stanford campus (google ‘Stanford’s war on social life’). It tells the story of the closing of the frat and theme houses – communities created from the bottom up, places of anarchy, creativity, comradeship, nuttery and sheer joy – their houses clinically rebadged with letters and numbers and students allocated by a top down bureaucracy on the basis of ‘fairness’. It’s the triumph of po-faced administrators over spontaneous self-organisation.
Never been a fan of frats but getting rid of them in this way is far far worse than anything frats are capable of doing.
I hope you read the article, harry. My comment doesn’t do justice to the issues it raises – particularly student isolation and anomie. The ‘cancellation’ of brotherhood/sisterhood and joy may explain why some have become so aggressive. The author claims that the suicide figures have increased since the frat and theme houses were closed.
My husband lived in a Russian House when he went there. Lots of theme parties, sounded really fun. There were French houses and Spanish etc.
Imagine getting into a nice school and not being able to have any fun? Lame.
Theres a piece in the Times today about the opposing views of JK Rowling and Joanne Harris which also mentions Philip Gwyn Jones from Picador and his Stalinist forced apology for pointing out the damage done by modern censorship ( an apology which didn’t save his job
I agree heartily with the various commenters who want to know who forced this apology from him and under what conditions. Maybe Unherd which is brave about taking on today’s censors could investigate it.
Reminds me of the Lenny Bruce joke about Je5us.
“A lot of people say to me, ‘Why did you kill Chr1st?’ I dunno, it was one of those parties, got out of hand, y’know”.
Great article that speaks the truth, Kat. This is why rowdy Libertarians and Classic Liberals are making common cause with traditional conservatives who are the “deplorable” among us. All of these groups of folks see the danger of the Matriarchal push by radical progressives in power who would rather that we all be encompassed in bubble-wrap on the couch at home next to our mom rather than skinning a knee, roughhousing, or being offended by a verbal jousting match with someone who disagrees with us.
“The matriarchal push by progressives in power.” This is the syndrome which dare not speak its name – at least without censoring by the gatekeepers of speech. Women tend to err on the side of caution, since as child-carers for millennia, their first instinct is to control the environment in the name of protection. A prime example is Jessica Ardern of hermetically sealed NZ.
Excellent piece. Thanks.
Great article, and I dearly hope the concluding prediction comes to pass. In fact, I’m hoping the late 2020’s may become the same backlash we saw in the 1990’s and all the young people collectively say “F*** this” and go out partying. And no, they won’t be stopped because they can’t afford it: the early raves were the cheapest night you could possibly have back then: it was a fiver to get in, a tenner on ecstasy and you just drank water all night.
Anyway, one minor niggle here is that I think it’s somewhat sad that Puritans, at least the original ones, have been cast as history’s fun police in the modern imagination. I suspect that what Puritanism really was, in the beginning, was an adaptation serving the need to maintain society in the face of extraordinary hardship and want. It wasn’t that Puritans rejected joy and fun, it was that none was available without colossally damaging costs and therefore an alternate, ascetic mode of existence was required to prevent everyone collapsing out of boredom and despair.
That’s not to say that we aren’t afflicted in the modern age by joyless, humourless morons who instinctively hate the sight of other people living their lives freely: of course they exist and they are tedious and trying to a degree that is sometimes almost unbearable. But I think they deserve to be re-labelled something else: fascists is a possible candidate, though there may be better ones. Puritans, I maintain, isn’t the most accurate label.
What you say about the original Puritans is largely correct, although their mentality wasn’t all that different even back home in England (which presented them with other life-and-death problems). At any rate, the Puritans (who had enough sex to produce many children) didn’t go nearly as far as more ascetic communities such as the Shakers (who banned all sexual activity). And I doubt that we can explain those big Puritan families entirely by the need for labor and the high rate of infant mortality.
But why does no one, at least so far, leave any room at all for a world that promotes moderation–a mentality that’s neither mindless hedonism nor joyless asceticism?
And why does everyone assume that sex means nothing other than “fun.” It does mean that, of course, but it can also mean so much more than that. For some people, sex is a venue of holiness. For all people, until very recently, sex is has been the sine qua non of marriage and family life–ideally, that is, of enduring intimacy and communal continuity.
Thank you for a serious, adult observation.
Excellent observation. Agree 100%.
Reminiscent of a moment at the Clinton inaugural. As military jets flew in formation over the proceedings, then-leftist actor Ron Silver said “those are our planes now”.
A group called Citizens for Sanity in the US has noticed that Progressive Puritans are ridicuous. They are buying billboard ads pointing the ridiculous positions out.
“Protect pregnant men from climate change.”
“Don’t let the radical right put our neighborhood street gangs behind bars.”
“Too much freedom is a bad thing. Get your IRS audit today.”
“Open the jails. Open the borders. Close the schools! Vote progressive!”
“If you don’t like being audited, you’re the problem.”
Progressive Puritans will be destroyed by their own internal contradictions, to borrow a phrase.
Brilliant humour those billboards!
Human nature means the neo-puritans are bound to fail in the end as they always have in the past. Look at how the Cromwellian Commonwealth was succeeded by the Restoration and licentious society of Charles 2nd for instance..
Early in the pandemic they decided to close the beaches.
I was heartened (and amused) to see that, at least on the South Shore of Long Island, where I grew up and where my favorite beaches are, they were roundly ignored. Everyone went anyway.
So I’ve been wondering ever since, in how many places and situations was casual non-obedience the normal thing throughout? Were the progressive puritans failing all along while the big media outlets were telling everyone the opposite?
Well, I do see puritanism but not in the same way. I see it in the minds of the population who are affronted enough by minor rule breaking and not very good lies, to oust a prime minister. It would have been a more appropriate reaction to sexual abuse, treason or massive fraud. Where I don’t see it is on the sexual scene. I wish I did because the present attitude to casual sex actually has demeaned it. Fun is not all about rule breaking, were it so the PM would still be here.
We have a new commercial and political Pooteresque senior clerk line manager ruling class, overseeing the great majority of office ” keep yer’ nose” clean” worker ants behind computers, who have no freedom of speech or expression, not route of challenge in their daily lives, and will ” anything for a quiet life/ to keep my job”: is it any wonder that nu britn has turned into a giant version of head office of ” Leounge Settee Heoldings PLC”?
But what is the grounding morality and emotion(s) that are the fuel within the puritanism?
Envy
“It is only the true believers who are left”
I suspect that it was always thus; unfortunately, they are also the ones with the squeaky wheel. And what’s that old saying about a squeaky wheel?
Wowsers all.
all puritans are doomed to fail!!….as they should ….they can only keep their lips pursed together and their assholes sucked up for so long….
Touché Kat you are on the zeitgeist & all the poo pop comments sure missed the uproar over all the Fun in Finland.
BTW
Why did Laura Hadeed censor me ?
She writes on Unheard also; does she take herself too seriously ?