Upcoming work and some updates

a brief note

Hi there,

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted here. I’ve been working on a very (very) long essay much of the week, and it keeps getting longer. I’ll need to split it, likely, or publish it in installments. It’s called “The Demon and the Genius,” and it’s a bit to do with someone else’s essay that I highly recommend reading. That essay is here:

Demons

My essay’s a bit on the same subject, as I’d been thinking for weeks about writing on spiritual aspects of conditions such as ressentiment and shame. Here’s a brief preview of mine:

Shame and embarrassment are both active states of hesitation, of holding back from action. Being in such a state too long leads to long periods of inaction, of being “stalled in life,” which Pope Francis asserted leads to becoming corrupted.

It seems like much of my work these last few years has been trying to understand the psychological state of ressentiment and how it influences mass politics. Ressentiment says “I am not happy, therefore you must not be allowed to be happy,” but as I noted in The Vampiric Gaze (and which Kirkegaard particularly notes), it ultimately says “I cannot act and therefore you shall not be allowed to act.” It is absolutely a spiritual state, though we should remember that the “wet blanket” or “stick in the mud” state of the person in ressentiment is physical: you get the sense that the fire of life has gone out of them, but rather than being merely depressed they actively seek to douse the fires of others.

I think shame and embarrassment are the key here. Prolonged states of inaction and hesitation (again, crudely, “constipation” of the will) only increase the feeling of shame until something is done about it. That something might be good and helpful (like finally going back to the gym), or it might be harmful and malevolent (suicide or abuse of others). The latter is the route of ressentiment, which seeks to replicate itself in others, to make the whole world hesitate out of fear and abdicate their agency.

I’ll keep working on the essay (it’s currently over six thousand words and wants to be 10,000) and hopefully publish either the whole essay or an installment of it on Sunday.

In the meantime, I wanted to let you know a few things.

First of all, my essay “Religion and the Left,” which was first published as a paywalled essay here and at A Beautiful Resistance, is now public.

Secondly, and speaking of A Beautiful Resistance, there’s currently a sale on all digital books there, including mine. Everything’s between 33% and 50% off until the end of the July, so if you’d like any of my books and enjoy reading on screens, this is a great time to get them.

And one more brief thing: the 9-week course I instruct on my book, Being Pagan, is scheduled to occur one more time this year. It will begin 4 September, and enrollment is sliding-scale. Also, founding supporters of From The Forest of Arduinna may take this for free. If you’d like this, please email me and I’ll make sure you’re set up.

Much more soon. Hope you’re very, very well!

—Rhyd