The Crowhill Journal

In a relatively recent plodcast episode — Plodcast 131: What I Saw in America — Doug Wilson spends some time on the Greek word astorgos, which is often translated as “without natural affection.” It’s an interesting discussion, and I commend it to you.

Wilson didn’t make the point I’m going to try to make, but his discussion pulled various threads together in my mind and got me started. These threads, which have collected over the years in a semi-organized fashion, seem to weave a pattern — that belief in God is a “natural affection,” and that atheists tend to lack natural affection, in this and other ways.

You may remember the four loves: agape, philia, eros and storge, which roughly mean unconditional love, friendship, romantic love, and familiarity.

Just as the word atheist means “without belief in God,” astorgos means “without familiarity (or natural affection).” (IOW, the “a” prefix is a negation.)

Wilson says “natural affection” covers things like loving your home town, or your country; having a favorite pair of jeans; having a bond with your relatives (even if you don’t like them); or having a preference for human life.

To a certain mindset, such preferences aren’t rational. Why should I prefer my town or country, when I know another town is better? Why should I shower unnecessary gifts, attention and affection on my children when there are other children who are starving? (Steven Pinker asks that question in one of his books.)

In a way, the answer is “because it’s right.” It’s natural. It’s natural to love your home, and not natural to fail to love it.

Sir Roger Scruton may have a long explanation for why such affections are justified, but to the ordinary person, they simply are correct as a matter of first principles. (Recall that Scruton described the work of a conservative philosopher as someone who explains to people why their prejudices are correct.)

Before you get sidetracked, I’m not making any sort of case that we should go around believing things simply because we have an intuition (or prejudice) that they must be correct. Rather, I’m saying there’s a mindset that tends to accept these intuitions, and there’s a mindset that tends to doubt them.

In my experience, atheists tend to doubt them. That is, they not only doubt the existence of God, but when you probe, you find that they tend to doubt — or at least resist — a lot of other things that seem to fall under the category of “natural affection.”

This is not an argument for or against atheism. I’m simply offering the hypothesis that there is a mindset — being with natural affection — that gladly accepts things like love of country and family and preferential treatment for one’s offspring — and there’s a mindset — being without natural affection — that prefers to doubt and question and reject such things. The hypothesis would further claim that if we could come up with a test for natural affection (leaving God out of it), that believers would be more likely to have it, and unbelievers would be more likely not to have it.

What do you think?

I assume that most of you are spending more time at home than you usually do. So … what are you doing? Are you watching TV, catching up on books, cleaning closets, doing inside projects?

I’m still going to the office every day, but I’m stuck at home in the evening and on the weekends, so I’ve been doing little things here and there. I bottled some wine. Organized the garage. Built some rod holders to organize my messy collection of fishing poles. I did a couple projects on the computer (related to my podcast). Nothing major, but I’m getting a few things done.

My train ride used to be my main reading time, and I don’t ride the train any more, so my reading has slacked off. I took a few hours this weekend to sit down with the Kindle and finish off Cocktail Time by Wodehouse. It’s fun. Not as good as Wooster and Jeeves, but … what is?

P&C drink and review Port City’s Long Black Veil, an American style, black IPA, then discuss whether employers should have any say in what employees do on their own time.

There seems to be a difference in degree, based on the extent to which the employee represents the company. To put it simply, there’s the line worker, the manager, and the company officer, and in each case, the company has an increasing interest in the employee’s positions on issues. Or at least what they say about them.

Is it different when the company has an explicit goal? How about a nonprofit that advocates for a particular issue. Can they only hire people who agree with them?

Is company culture a good enough reason? What if a company doesn’t want any Trump voters?

The old standard, back in the 80s, was that the only thing that mattered was your ability to do the job. That was the standard progressive view. E.g., Bill Clinton’s sex life was irrelevant as long as he was doing his job well.

The new standard is harder to parse, but the boys do their best to meander their way through it.

Some very interesting things have happened in our response to #coronavirus. For one, we’ve all agreed that liquor stores are essential, and schools are not.

But seriously, what will be different when this all blows over?

• Will we still shake hands?
• Will we give each other more distance in public?
• Will we wash our hands more frequently?
• Will we invest more in stockpiles of pandemic response supplies?

The one that bugs me the most — will anyone ever be able to say “we can’t afford that?” when the whole country (except Rand Paul) wanted the Congress to spend $2 trillion.

P&C drink and review Purple Monkey Dishwasher, by Evil Genius Beer Company, and then discuss the dread math of human life.

We like to say that every life is infinitely valuable, but we don’t mean it. Are we willing to eat better to extend our lives one year? Are we willing to reduce the national speed limit to 20 mph to save highway deaths? Should we all wear helmets all the time, or PFDs when we swim?

There’s clearly a calculus to life. We’re willing to spend a certain amount to save a life, but there are limits.

Coronavirus has put this in sharper perspective. Policymakers are faced with lives saved vs. economic consequences. It’s a horrible decision to have to make.