In the Belly of the Whale: Reflections on NatCon London 2023 (1)
Lessons from Jonah and the Whale for our time. Jonah’s story can be seen to highlight the danger in which even a responsible and ostensibly good person can find himself.
(This is part one of a longer essay, but you can listen to me reading the whole thing on the recording below. Part two to follow).
Amidst the excitement of the London 2023 National Conservatism conference, one highlight was the conference dinner in the Natural History Museum’s Hintze Hall. The magnificent spectacle of the giant blue whale skeleton posing dramatically across the vast ceiling space offered something unique. This was not merely a visual spectacle. This blue whale, named ‘Hope,’ points to the Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale and its surprisingly prescient lessons.
The story of Jonah is worthy of further illumination for what it has to teach us and even more so for the event’s wider contexts. Much of the intellectual underpinning for the conference lies with NatCon’s chairman, Yoram Hazony. His thought has had a lengthy gestation, encompassing the rich analysis of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (2012), The Virtue of Nationalism (2018) and the more recent Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022). There is a carefully woven thread that binds these publications amounting to a coherent philosophical body of thought. What seemed like a straightforward coincidence, the whale in the Hintze Hall, nevertheless offers an unexpected opportunity to fortify that thread.
In brief, Jonah is called upon by God to confront the formidable evil in the city of Nineveh. Instead of facing up to the task, he takes a stark diversion. He boards a ship, is thrown overboard, swallowed by a ‘big fish’ in which he remains for three days before being spat out. That evening, the first of a three-day conference, it seemed as though we too were ensconced within the belly of the whale before being symbolically spat back out into the world.
The Jonah story has been classified as satire, parody, parable, allegory or narrative history. There is no scholarly consensus on this, however, there are elements of many genres within the story. Sheldon H. Blank describes it as ‘an illustrated sermon.’ It has even been thought of as a meta-prophetic book in that it examines the role of the prophet itself. The story is so multi-layered, it presents endless possibilities. Thus, what follows will be selective.
Let us return to the Jonah story for a moment. God’s words to Jonah are a clear call to action to address a substantive evil. According to Hayyim Lewis, the Ninevites were ‘a power crazed foe…uprooting entire peoples in their fury for conquest,’ having already extinguished the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Additionally, archaeological evidence has revealed some of the cruelties inflicted upon victims involving slow and painful deaths, gouging of body parts, cutting off limbs and crucifixion. Furthermore, the prophet Nahum provides vivid descriptions of Nineveh, and declares: ‘Woe to the city soaked in blood, steeped in deceit, full of plunder, never empty of prey…’ (Nahum 3:1).
Jordan Peterson has conceptualised the Jonah story as being about what happens when we fail stand up to corruption. Societies become corrupted when evil is allowed to flourish. When faced with corruption, Peterson asks, what are you going to do about it? Because if you collude, you will get more corruption. Opposing the corruption is the obvious answer, however (and this is the point) this is not easy. Peterson makes it clear that Jonah’s reaction in avoiding God’s command is entirely rational and logical, especially given the extent of the violence and cruelty he would be facing. However, running away will not solve the problem.
In fairness to Jonah then, his task will be no easy ride. If anything, it represents the challenge of a lifetime. And therein lies a clue to our own difficulties. We are facing tangible evils today that arguably represent the challenge of our lifetimes. Christopher Demuth introduced the conference with a claim that powerful forces are attacking our heritage. James Orr spoke of the deep despair at the failure of right-wing parties to defend history, heritage, borders, religion, philosophical beliefs and freedom. The British Conservative party is currently in government, yet it has not merely neglected to conserve what is good, it has actively colluded with so-called woke ideas. As Orr indicated, the political right turns to woke ideas in order to signal its virtue to others.
Conference speakers drew attention to a variety of issues that matter right now. The family is not sufficiently supported, the ‘trans’ issue is deepening, critical race theories are aggressively pushed in workplaces, children are woefully neglected in education. Additionally, woven into these calamities are the complexities around immigration and its varying threats to communities and ways of life. Conference speaker after speaker told of a world increasingly severed from its past; a world where identities are for the choosing as if offered on smorgasbords; buildings and statues are denigrated and the destruction of everything we hold dear continues. Moreover, we have the gruelling censorious cancel culture that is seemingly all pervasive, along with the bullying tendency of ‘woke-ism’ trampling upon our speech and thought. (As I write, the cancellation of innocent people’s bank accounts in Britain for holding incorrect opinions is gathering pace with deeply sinister implications).
Whether the sum of these calamities computes to the level of evil supposedly occurring in the Biblical Nineveh is a moot point. But evil is evil and that call-to-action calls to us. We must decide if we will follow the call. In Scripture, when someone fulfils the word of God, they ‘rise up.’ So, shall we ‘arise’ and get to the task?
Call to Action
In his conference address, Yoram Hazony spoke of a growing political homelessness, alienation and the disconnect between the individual and family, religion and nation. He talked about the importance of loyalty, honour and the sacred. Characterising the ‘woke’s’ destructive tendencies, he explained that the goal of cultural revolutionaries is to ‘progressively destroy every single thing that is inherited from the past.’ And speaking of Britain,
‘…to make you guilty about it, to make you feel terrible about it, to make you feel that it is not really yours. To alienate you from everything that you have been, and everything that you as a people have contributed to history and the world.’
Hazony made the point that people the world over, look to Britain and her story for hope. Hope. Both the word and the whale seemed to envelope us that evening at dinner. Yet, when things seem hopeless and we are called upon to stand up to wrong, it is our responsibility to heed the call. As we learn from Jonah, avoidance brings catastrophe.
Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah heads for the port of Jaffa and boards a ship bound for Tarshish, ‘away from the service of the Lord.’ The literalists see Tarshish as the furthest southern tip of Spain. Actually, Tarshish is anywhere other than where you need to be. Tarshish, says Sheldon H. Blank, is ‘the excuse you keep giving when neglecting your duty.’ At Jaffa, Jonah goes down into the ship. Here, we have the first of many images of Jonah descending, and sinking downwards that occur in the story. He goes down to Jaffa, down to get onto the boat, down below deck, he lies down, he falls unconscious, he goes down into the water when he is thrown overboard, down into the depths. And in his subsequent poem, he cries out from Sheol, the place of the dead where he cannot descend any further.
No sooner does Jonah make his way down into the vessel than a great storm rages and blows the boat hither and thither so that the ship ‘seemed to be breaking up.’ The turbulence set in motion seems analogous to the turmoil that always results from tolerated evil, from ignoring the responsibility to deal with it. This is what happens when tolerance reaches its tipping point. We fall into a tumult of strife, anxiety and confusion.
The sailors are afraid, and as pagans, they each cry out to his ‘own god.’ They attempt to steady the boughs by lightening the load, throwing cargo overboard, but to no avail. This translates as appeasement. We say to ourselves, if I just compromise here, or perhaps if I sacrifice this, or that aspect of my life, maybe the monster will not get me. And as Jonah continues his descent to near death, so do we. For how much can we throw overboard before we have nothing left to give? How many compromises must we make? How far must we sink? And so, from the deepest part of the vessel, Jonah continues down into a deep sleep. He withdraws even further from his duty of service, away from God and into himself. Downwards he goes falling into unconsciousness. Then he is awoken. The ship’s captain admonishes him. ‘How can you sleep?’ And mirroring God’s words, he adds: ‘Arise! Cry out to your God!’ And it would seem that the ship’s captain has more faith in that moment than the twisting, turning, churned up Jonah.
Are we Jonah here? Does it seem like everything is breaking up for us? Are we afraid of what is happening? Afraid enough to do something or to run away? Do we not feel like crying out to our leaders, or even admonishing ourselves. ‘How can you sleep?’ How can I sleep? How can we sleep when there is so much work to be done?
Both sailors and Jonah realise that it is his presence aboard the ship that brings the storm. With fearful reluctance, the sailors throw Jonah overboard and the storm stops raging. Downwards again goes Jonah into the water. At this point, the text is fairly ambiguous and there is uncertainty about the actual moment Jonah gets swallowed up. So we could say that it is the ‘big fish’ sent from God that rescues him and provides an ‘ark’ in which he can think and pray. Jonah does not see it like that, from his perspective, things just keep getting worse. Now, enclosed within a strangely womb-like living coffin, all he can do is pray. It is at the point when he reaches rock-bottom that Jonah recites a prayer in the form of a psalm. He cries out to the Lord.
Red Wall
The conference heard of the ordinary person’s cri de coeur from speakers such as Matt Goodwin, a professor of politics, Darren Grimes, a young journalist and conservative activist, and Danny Kruger Member of Parliament (MP). All three exhorted parliamentary Conservatives to be conservative in the face of formidable revolutionary adversaries. We learned of the so-called British ‘Red Wall Tories,’ working class first time conservative voters in formerly safe Labour seats who switched sides in Britain’s 2019 general election. Goodwin’s powerful speech was a plea on behalf of the working classes whose lives have been decimated by the European Union’s (EU) supranational project. Lee Anderson MP, a working-class former Labour councillor, now deputy chairman of the Conservative party, gave a similarly impassioned speech.
Red Wall Tories are some of the people who voted for Britain’s exit from the European Union, or ‘Brexit.’ Britain’s rejection of the European Union is (along with America’s election of President Trump) one of the signs Hazony cites as indicating a turn towards nationalism. It is the case that ordinary people understand that their identity is tied up with the nation. Yet, the powers that be seem adamant for its incremental destruction. Since the EU referendum, the accountability of politicians seems to be a distant mirage, a memory of times past. The problem is compounded by those parliamentary Conservatives who differ from official narratives on Brexit, covid or climate yet see no point in taking the risk in voting against them. This is because the opposition parties are only too pleased to support the government contra all we would expect from His Majesty’s Opposition. The state exists to support the nation. However, right now, there are big questions arising about what this means, not least the looming threats from unaccountable, unelected supranational non-governmental organisations, working in tandem with the EU that pose a far worse threat to the existence of the nation state, freedom and even the human person itself.
Culture Wars
Many of the issues raised at the conference were familiar. The so-called culture wars have been eloquently examined by Sir Roger Scruton writing in Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (2007). The assault on our identity from leftists drawing upon a Foucauldian framework of power is all too recognisable. The resulting ‘critical theories’ and ‘methodologies’ serve not to seek knowledge, but in some sense to determine it. At the very least, as Scruton says, they wish to send unwanted knowledge ‘packing into the past.’ The notion that the past is now something to be ‘overcome’ was a connecting thread throughout the conference. We now witness the coming to fruition of a culture of repudiation which is, as Scruton writes, ‘largely negative.’ Reason itself is posited as a product of western culture and so therefore to be spurned. As Scruton says, the question ceases to be concerned with what you are saying but from which social position or identity do you speak? For a given ‘hate’ crime, let us say ‘racism’ (although we could choose from a range here) only correctly designated persons could possibly be victims or perpetrators. It is no longer the moral principle that is in question. The overriding concern is focused upon who committed the crime (or not) of racism. That is all that matters. Principles are passé. Identity, and then only certain identities, count. This is dangerous, divisive and unfair. It is everything our society has been working against, partly at the behest of the left no less, for decades. The left’s apparent ‘about turn’ chimes with precisely the point at which we had achieved the principle of racial equality as Douglas Murray has outlined in his books, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019), and The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason (2022).
Naturally we must speak from our particular positions. However, to have what we say automatically dismissed on account of that positioning is the problem of the moment. Identity politics has suffused and suffocated all discussion. Rarely would one hear that someone ‘identifies’ as a conservative, because such language is peculiar and alien. As Scruton perceived, to be a conservative is a way of being rather than the adoption of an ideological stance.
Scruton writes that because there is no conservative overarching vision for society and no universal set of policies, there has been the assumption that there is no conservative thought, no beliefs, no principles. On the contrary, conservatism comes about through a rich diversity of ‘lived experience’ to use an expression beloved of the left (but never endorsed for its enemies). There is a plethora of writing from serious conservative thinkers. In addition to the familiar names of David Hume, Edmund Burke, John Locke and Michael Oakeshott, there are works from formidable thinkers such as, Alexis de Tocqueville, Andrew Sullivan, Samuel Burgess, Douglas Murray, Mary Eberstadt, David Horowitz, Yoram Hazony, and others whose work sits alongside the of-cited output of Roger Scruton, arguably the most prolific of modern conservative philosophers. Moreover, conservatism’s more rational and philosophical enquiry finds a home in places beyond the political sphere. One finds examples within the arts, humanities, religion and theology and music. Conservatism’s distinct lack of theorising emanates from its existence as a lived tradition and a way of thinking. Its ‘ground up’ philosophy is the antidote to the ‘top-down’ totalising of the left in all its forms. Quite simply, we know the world by being in the world, not by theorising about it.
Conservatives do not always help themselves however. Amidst the culture wars, an impulse frequently associated with some conservatives is the tendency to adopt a tone of benign tolerance, assuming that problems will work themselves out, that interference is simply not polite. Moreover, one tells oneself, things cannot be that bad, surely? Plus, there is the trusting assumption that facts will always win the day. But they do not. This is because the arguments are not about facts or common sense or even knowledge anymore. They are about the manipulation of media, language, the dissolving of boundaries and identity in the pursuit of ends not always openly or clearly specified. Hence, we may imagine we are dealing with an incident of unfairness. Yet what is actually happening is a sleight of hand, a catch-me-if-you-can game of ‘one-up-person-ship.’ Ultimately you are being set up for a long-term goal of engendering the very chaos and destruction that will be cited as a reason for a ‘great reset,’ or what we used to call a revolution.
As conservatives who are accustomed to reasoned argument and debate, all of this is beyond bewildering. Today’s leftist activists adopt what we might call a big ‘sulk’ of cancel culture which would be laughable if it were not so utterly destructive and cruel. I cite two examples. David Starkey, one of the speakers at NatCon, described in a New Culture Forum interview how he was once a distinguished member of learned bodies such as the Royal Historical Society and Cambridge College. And yet his fifty years of scholarship counted for nothing when he made one slip into politically incorrect language. Also speaking at NatCon, Nigel Biggar told of his experience concerning his Ethics and Empire project becoming the target of an online denunciation. This led to a public row and a book cancelation by Bloomsbury. Chillingly, he has described the situation whereby publishers will not now publish important well-reasoned books that challenge certain prevailing orthodoxies that are, in Biggar’s view, fraudulent. History is thus degraded to a sequence of reductive identity games where the lesson is always the same. Pale-skinned, heterosexual (mostly male) westerners are to blame.
(In the next part, I write further about Identity, Boundaries and the Human Person. Until then, you can listen to the whole essay in the recorded version)
Thank you for reading, comments welcome. Feel free to share.
Drawings by the Sideways Thinker.
Hey Caroline,
I like your reading of Jonah very much. On the political reflections, I am open to listening but probably the wrong audience for it. I see this knot of problems from a different vantage point, and am becoming wary of invoking 'woke' as I fear it taking on a role much like 'unvaccinated' or, shall we say, 'Samaritan'. The wedge issues serve the powerful far too well in dividing us...
My political philosophy has always come from a position of 'liberals cannot construct a legitimate politics if it does not include conservative perspectives' and vice versa. Alas, I find the term 'centrist' doesn't mean much when the centre is precisely what is missing, so what do I call myself? And does it matter...? The old framework that gave left and right its meaning is breaking down, along with the political mythology that used to provide a common foundation.
This is why Stranger Worlds is a project based upon principles, but even this can only be a tentative step for we do not know where we are going yet. I hope to find out. If I am not afraid to go to Nineveh, I do fear what might follow if we somehow manage to tear it down without agreeing upon the foundations of what is to be built afterwards.
Thanks for enduring my random reflections. 🙂 I look forward to part two.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
What you say here (and, I presume, in the second part yet to come) dove-tails very nicely with the philosophy of mass formation so well and clearly explained by Mattias Desmet in The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Desmet explains the underlying motivations and structure behind "cancellation," intolerance for opposing opinions, the ignoring of facts and the shouting down of people who bring them up, and the whole "loving of Big Brother." (Apologies to George Orwell.) The Psychology of Totalitarianism is a must-read for anyone who listens to (and accepts) your admonition to take action.