In the Belly of the Whale: Reflections on NatCon 23 (Part 2)
The Hararis of this world might understand human beings as interchangeable objects and hackable things. However, humans are not things. What the Biblical Jonah teaches us about the human condition.
This is the second part of a longer essay split into two halves. The first part can be found here. You can also listen to me read out the entire piece by clicking on the button here:
Identity
The issue of identity was a frequent theme throughout the conference. Even here, the Biblical Jonah’s story makes a contribution. Jonah’s identity is foregrounded firstly as a son, that of Amittai (meaning truth) then as a prophet. The sailors ask him, ‘what is your task? Your origin? Your land and your people?’ Although Jonah will tell the sailors, ‘I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of Heaven,’ quite simply, Jonah’s identity comes from what he does, where he comes from, where he lives and his tribe. He does not ‘identify’ as a prophet, or a Hebrew, on both counts he is one.
We need to return to the most obvious of questions. From where do we derive our identities? Speakers such as Danny Kruger MP, Emma Webb, James Orr and others reminded us that we are not ‘born free’ but born with attachments to family and community. We arrive into a cultural inheritance with its traditions, history and heritage. Suffice to say that none of us chooses any of this; we are, as Martin Heidegger expressed it, ‘thrown’ into the world.
Where once, loyalty to one’s nation was a perfectly respectable stance, as Hazony has described, it has now been rendered as utterly disreputable. Speaking of his own experiences as a former member of the European Parliament, (MEP), Daniel Hanann described EU colleagues as ‘spitting out’ the words, ‘patriot’ or ‘national’ as if they were akin to racism. Yet far from being racist or selfish, patriotism has the power to unite people of all backgrounds. It is patriotism that invites the kindly adoption of the third person plural that Roger Scruton describes; the ‘we’ who gather under the flag, a point that was additionally made by Henry George, also speaking at the conference.
Conservative and Labour alike have embraced the European universalising project. Instead of accepting accountability for their policies and interacting with the people who vote for them, they have maintained a socially distanced existence for some time now. One could even say that our representatives are on a perpetual journey to Tarshish. And, as we have established, Tarshish is anywhere but the right place.
An example of the persistent Tarshish sojourn is the frustration experienced by the public when politicians used the EU as a convenient stooge to blame for failed policies. Politicians could always claim, ‘it was not us; it was them.’ And now, the same could be said of the unconcealment of unelected globalist non-governmental organisations (NGOs) garnering power. The United Nations (UN), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Economic Forum (WEF) along with the EU behemoth, joined by the mainstream media, celebrities, trans activists, ‘big pharma’ and others now wield an abundance of unaccountable and aggressive power over millions of people. This is not how it was meant to be, and it is not the vision of national sovereignty extolled by the speakers at NatCon.
This conglomerate is the modern embodiment of the Biblical Tower of Babel. The vision is the hideous prospect of everyone in the world having one language and one set of words. The encroachment of ever-evolving and ubiquitous politically correct language with its weary shibboleths of race, sex and gender, and now climate change is all too familiar. As if this were not enough, the language of computer algorithms and artificial intelligence risks obliterating the very essence of human life.
In the Babel narrative, the emergence of the tower and the city followed the new technology, which was, in that story, a new way of baking bricks and making mortar. Note that the technology was not developed for a purpose, rather it is the purpose that is revealed by the technology. And so, in the modern day, rapid developments in modern technology precede the supranational project for one world governance. Technology has shown the powerful what is possible, and unless we ‘arise’ and face the foe, it will continue to reveal the inevitable imprisoning controlling super-structure of our nightmares.
It is our boat that is on its way to Tarshish, and the storm is raging. As ordinary people see threats to their ways of life increasing with roll outs of bio-medical dictatorships, digital passports and programmable currencies; the inevitable social credit systems and increasing surveillance, they too are afraid. We are being tossed about on the good ship Britannia and no amount of cargo off-set will quell the storms that rage here, in addition to those that are visible on the horizon. Some foresee deliberately engineered food shortages under the guise of the climate change narrative. Additionally, under the same rubric, the costs of fuel keep rising, normative means of transport curtailed, and fifteen-minute cities and twenty-minute neighbourhoods make a mockery of many recent ‘freedom of movement’ anti-Brexit protests, some of which even returned to haunt NatCon delegates outside the conference venue.
It seems as though the good ships Britannia, Americana and even Europa are not just breaking up but actively being broken up. Is it ethical for a person tasked with responsibility to go deeper into himself and remain oblivious to what is unfolding? In a digital and socially distanced world, our leaders never have to look their citizens in the eye whilst rustling up schemes for them. Everything is systematised, computerised and remote. It is fair to assume that the high and mighty look forever inwards, distanced and protected, their desires carefully redacted from the mediated version of things put out there on an increasingly anti-social media.
It was regrettable that some of these dangers were only hinted at by some in the conference. It hardly needs stressing that for an event dedicated to national conservatism, the looming horror of the deliberate obliteration of the nation state by command of a supranational conglomerate ought to have been resolutely lamented as an unmitigated disaster. So why the timidity? Why the fear? Perhaps in the face of what would surely be today’s formidable evil, deceit and plunder, we would all rather head for Tarshish.
The Jonah story continues. After being thrown overboard, Jonah is now within the depths of the water. Jungian psychologists tell us that water is often a symbol for the unconscious. Things lurk down in the water as they prowl the unconscious. Hidden below the surface, the horror of the last three years could not entirely be set aside at NatCon. If we do not pay sufficient attention, we may find that we are enveloped within the so-called great reset and the planned one-world government, meaning the end of the nation state as we know it. If so, we will find that it is we who have reached rock bottom.
At the corresponding point of oblivion in the Jonah story, God sends the ‘big fish’ to swallow Jonah up. Note that the fish does not exactly eat him. Rather, the big fish, or whale as we so often think of it, rescues him. Close to death, Jonah prays:
I cried out in my trouble to the Lord and He answered me. From the belly of Sheol I called – You heard my voice.
The more he runs away, the worse things get. As Jordan Peterson reminds us, the monster under the bed only gets bigger the more you avoid it. There is no real choice left. Jonah must face what needs to be done. The story shifts again. God hears Jonah’s prayers. However, instead of addressing Jonah, God addresses the fish and causes it to spew Jonah out onto the dry land. Water in the ancient world signified chaos and death. Jared Byas relates this to the symbolic undoing of creation. And in this way, Jonah himself is undone. Jonah undergoes a symbolic and spiritual death. His travails within the big fish result in a breakthrough, a rebirth of sorts. It is as if Jonah has had to reach the very edge of existence, the boundary separating the living and the dead before he gets to the point at which he can progress to his destiny. It is a dreadful thought, but we too may need to reach the point of destruction if we are to reach ours.
Boundaries
Frank Furedi described how the dissolution of boundaries now seems to be an endless pursuit. He drew attention to what must have been abundantly clear to the conference at that point, that the EU celebrates every identity with one exception, that of the nation state. However, this breaking of boundaries is now strenuously apparent in terms of sexual difference. Concepts of sex and gender have melded. Male and female are no longer seen as complementary to one another. Rather, the categorisation of sex is now seen as something arbitrary and interchangeable. Something ‘assigned’ rather than innate. Furedi spoke about the blurring of boundaries between child and adult. Adults dress and act like children and parents treat their offspring like peers. Schools are more like clinics that address psychological issues such as self-esteem, rather than undertaking their core responsibility of transmitting knowledge. As one boundary after another collapses this ultimately leads to the dissolution of the difference between right and wrong. Furedi stressed that we need to pay attention to the threat to our heritage, which gives meaning to people’s lives. A frequent refrain we hear from the left is the claim that something is ‘outdated.’ Thus, if heritage is ‘outdated’ the assumption follows that we must be rid of it.
The lines between past and present dissolve into what Emma Webb referred to as an ‘endless present.’ Modernity, she reminded us, is a euphemism for ‘year zero,’ that Maoist attempt to start again, to do away with the ‘olds’ of ideas, habits, culture and customs. As I have already alluded, this is directly analogous to Klaus Schwab’s ‘great reset’ as a discernible analogue for revolution. We must not allow these Orwellian shifts in language obscure the peril facing us. Furedi was clear about this point. In the left’s constant attempt to destabilise the past, nothing less than the survival of western civilisation is at stake.
The recognition of the Marxian winds blowing in our direction was clear in Rod Dreher’s speech, read by Fr Daniel French. Lamenting the capitulation of church leadership to the forces of Marxism at this ‘dreadful time,’ he warned about the prospect of sleepwalking into a post-Christian future. Dreher cited St. Benedict’s call for Christians to live a prayerful and Godly life. He warned of the urgent need to study the enemy and prepare for what is coming. Or rather, what is already knocking at the door.
He spoke of the underground church ‘in exile’ and the necessity of building a protective ark. Even here we can find echoes of Jonah. It is noteworthy that the Jonah story is linked to the Biblical Noah. Whereas Noah stays on a boat that is referred to as an ark, Jonah is thrown off a ship only to find rescue inside that whale-as-ark. Additionally, an ark is something special in Hebrew culture. It is notable that the Torah scrolls (the Five books of Moses) are housed in an ‘ark’ in the synagogue. Moreover, Jonah shares his name with the Hebrew word for dove (yonah) the faithful messenger from God who informed Noah he could leave his ark and build a new life. (A life incidentally, where re-population will save the world).
The Jonah story revolves around paradoxes. Jonah the prophet goes in the opposite direction to God’s instructions; the pagan ship’s captain speaks with more faith than the prophet Jonah; the prophet is the one who receives messages from others rather than delivering them. Poignantly, the story is traditionally read on the Jewish High Holy day of Yom Kippur, appropriately because it is a time of repentance and fasting. Paradoxically, at the conference dinner, we ate whilst underneath and symbolically within the whale.
Rather than being the authoritative teacher, it is Jonah who is the student learning through experience what is right after getting it so wrong. These paradoxes might be telling us that things are the wrong way round and that we must repair and re-turn them. That evening, looking up at Hope, the Blue Whale, I felt jolted with the sense of that call to act. We cannot leave everything to God to fix; we must help with the heavy lifting.
It is imperative to challenge the left’s constant desire to correct the world, to hone and refine every last little perceived racist and sexist detail. Failure to do so will result in a hollowed-out space where a rich culture once thrived. ‘Identitarian’ politics turns people into quarry for victim hunters who desperately seek out new classes of suffering to champion and immiserate. The left’s project is an oxymoronic claim for the perfectibility of man, and a remaking of man in their own image as opposed to the image of God. In tolerating this we have ‘turned away from the service of the Lord.’
The Human Person
This brings us to what is arguably the most poignant of the themes discussed at the conference, that of the human person. Some speakers spoke more generally about population decline and plummeting birth rates. Ed West described our ageing population and that having children is now regarded as an eccentricity. Chiming with Emma Webb’s concept of the ‘endless present,’ he invoked Edmund Burke’s notion of the relationship between generations past, present and future when describing the modern culture of presentism. There is a real lack of interest in posterity, so what shall we pass on to our children?
The question concerning the human person was addressed by Mary Harrington. Until recently, it was axiomatic that bodily sovereignty was a private individual matter. Yet the state now makes many claims upon our bodies in a way that has been especially revealed over the past three years. Harrington cited Benjamin Bratton, a leading theorist of the progressive post-liberal politics of the body who mocks concerns for bodily sovereignty as ‘reactionary, laughable and obsolete.’ This, she concluded, is less of a left/right issue and more of a humanist and post-humanist one.
The recent prominence of trans rights is situated within this post human tendency. Some were taken by surprise at Harrington’s claim that as a society we had ‘embarked upon the trans-humanist voyage’ when we introduced the contraceptive pill. At that point, we ceased using medicine to heal illness but to shape, modify and perfect the human in our own image. The idea of the human as made in the image of God has disintegrated. The normal body is no longer an endpoint, but a baseline for the bio-tech industry. In the market place, the augmentations and modifications that are possible render the human as a mere assemblage of parts and systems.
We are drifting into a world that no longer understands nor values the human person, and struggles even to define it. The scant regard for rising rates of abortion, euthanasia and suicide gives rise to a perceptible cult of death. In a sense then we are witnessing the death of the human person as a kind of societal death wish. The Jonah story twice expresses a death wish which emerges at precisely the points where he is in error. Firstly, Jonah asks to be thrown overboard the ship to what he assumes will be certain death. And later, when he does not get his own way with God, he wishes he were dead.
As already stated, sometimes, we need to return to the most obvious of questions. What is a person? Do we see the human as essentially spiritual, purposeful and meaningful? Or is the human just a collection of parts to be reassembled and fashioned at will? Are we just ‘hackable animals’ to cite the WEF’s Yuval Harari, or do we insist that we are more than that?
Roger Scruton discusses the human and personhood in On Human Nature (2017) and The Soul of the World (2014). Scruton argues that we are more than animals and are distinguished by our ability to laugh, our sense of morality, our language and culture. He writes, ‘the person is an emergent entity, rooted in the human being, but belonging to another order of explanation than that explored by biology.’ We are meaning-seeking creatures, we have a sense of the sacred and the uniqueness of the individual. The Hararis of this world might understand human beings as interchangeable objects and hackable things. However, humans are not things. Scruton locates Hannah Arendt’s expression, ‘banality of evil’ as being precisely the ‘bureaucratic mind-set’ that reduces people to mere things. We are reminded that one of the functions of the concentration camp was to deprive people of their humanity and render them as things.
Why is this relevant now? It is the anonymised world of the bureaucrat with his reliance upon systems that enables evil to flourish. Modern technocratic, systems-led approaches are taking western societies towards a totalising vision of one-world government headed by unaccountable ‘stakeholders’ and NGOs. In ‘A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism’ (2006), Scruton argues that the pursuit of power is what lies behind the totalising impulse which frequently coalesces around the rationalisation of resentment, a theme Douglas Murray touched upon in his speech at the conference dinner.
We are mistaken if we think that we have learned the lessons of the previous century. Scruton explains that totalitarianism has been identified in some ancient civilisations, so it is not confined to the twentieth century. We might even imagine the Biblical Babel story or the city of Nineveh as examples of these ancient antecedents. Citing these Biblical examples is not a contrivance, rather I take a lesson from Yoram Hazony’s Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture which demonstrates how the Bible conveys important rational arguments to us. Citing Leon Kass, Hazony explains that the emphasis is not about ‘what happened’ in a given Biblical story, but about what always happens. We can never ‘finally learn’ a lesson. As part of our cultural inheritance, the teaching must be renewed in every generation.
The Bible’s diminishing influence upon society is a reflection of the ‘endless present’ we learned about and the eschewing of sacred history. Nature abhors a vacuum and human religiosity is finding a new focus. Sebastian Morello’s observations on the religiosity of the new Marxism struck a deep chord. He reminded us that despite the frequent mentions of ‘woke’ at the conference it has not been fully diagnosed. His descriptions of woke’s parodic religious attributes garnered strenuous applause. I paraphrase:
‘…It has moral decrees, sacrificial victims, proselytisers, and a highly effective inquisition. It has developed an exegetical methodology for interpreting history, it has an index of forbidden books, and an iconography, especially and importantly the selfie, a frozen avatar of the disembodied and authentic self, There are saints and martyrs, a doctrine of healthcare and safety as the topmost ethical value. There is the idolatry of technologies, angelic mediators that will bring about a new heaven and earth; and it promotes the LGBTQ+ movement as the highest religious expression with its public processions, flags and banners and now a liturgical year complete with holy days and months of festivities. This religion sees the state as a mortal god to use the words of Thomas Hobbes, that will bestow the infinite Progress for which we beg. Everyone must join in the devotions of this public religion that promises not to redeem our human nature but rather our denatured authentic selves by vanquishing human nature altogether. Any unenthusiastic heretics are to be judged and driven from polite society.’
Rather than providing an inclusive gathering point for society, this new (counterfeit) religion is an exercise in self-fashioning, disintegration and detachment. Morello cited Joseph de Maistre who linked the misery of detachment with dependence upon a state induced bureaucracy. It is now a banality which manifests as a global technological omnipresence. The impulse towards globalism threatens the human person with a range of trans-humanisms. The atomised human, this ‘hackable animal’ who resides in some technological ‘anywhere,’ online, on social media and via the ubiquitous ‘phone,’ no longer understands who he is, where he comes from or belongs, nor to whom he belongs. Moreover, he is now to be funnelled into the mould of a ‘global citizen’ a term coined by the WEF globalist conglomerate. An utterly meaningless concept, for how can someone be a citizen of the ‘globe?’ How could that even be constructed? The answer is it could not. At least, not in the real world, or the democratic world as we understand it.
This concept of global citizenship gained prominence with the recent covid episode since which, as Morello explained, we have seen the growth of a ‘colossal information surveillance industry encroaching upon every private sphere.’ Giorgio Agamben coined the phrase ‘state of exception’ as the mechanism by which democracies can transform themselves into totalitarian states. It is now possible to see with clarity that the covidian event was the state of exception required for the growing surveillance industry and all that flows from it. The ensuing regime, as Morello outlined, was reproduced across the world. Its attributes are precisely those you would expect to emerge in autocratic regimes.
In an isolated and highly scrutinised existence, states of emergency can be called upon to justify all manner of horrors reducing the human to an existence that is little more than a ‘bare life.’ We could say that this is what happens when we head for Tarshish. However, it is really the point at which we have arrived inside the belly of the whale. All Jonah has in that moment is his bare life, an existence divested of all true vitality. And as we sat ensconced symbolically in the belly of the whale in that London venue, the question arose. Will we remain in the belly only to be consumed by the monster? Or do we turn to the higher power and get ourselves out to do the work?
Conclusion:
When viewed through the lens of the NatCon conference, Jonah’s story can be seen to highlight the danger in which even a responsible and ostensibly good person can find himself. In this sense, Jonah is an embodiment of a real human predicament. He sees the evil of an established society and recoils from the confrontation it presents. We can understand our own current predicament, be that as an elected politician being buffeted by the storms of Realpolitik, or the ordinary person experiencing the pressures unleashed by unaccountable authoritative forces.
The problem for Jonah, and for us, is that Tarshish is really an illusion. Running away from the monster never works. Eventually, Jonah learns what is right by getting things wrong and even by arguing with God. NatCon 2023 provided a much-needed opportunity both to air some of the urgent issues we face as conservatives, and to give serious thought as what to do about them. There can be no doubt that we are experiencing a multi-pronged attack on the nation, our culture, history, the Judaeo-Christian heritage, with serious consequences for the family, children, and even the human.
Sebastian Morello spoke about Maistre’s conception of an embryonic ‘atheistic and imperial technocracy’ that we now face in its maturity. The choice facing us remains as it has invariably been. Will we choose nihilism or God? And this, of course was Jonah’s own choice, and as such, the crucial lesson we learn from him. His emergence from the big fish is predicated on making God his choice.
Some may feel critical about my framing the Jonah story as a parable about taking responsibility rather than one about obedience to God. Although in a nuanced way, these attributes might be seen as one and the same. God could quite easily have set upon his own course to destroy Nineveh. However, the point many miss within the obedience trope is the requirement God has of Jonah’s own efforts, alongside the need Jonah has of the lessons he learns in the process.
The illusion of Tarshish, that fictional place to which we run, belongs in the realm of fantasy. This realm of the unreal has more in common with woke fantasists and cynical opportunists whose technological bureaucratic vision for us all is the idolatry we must abhor. Whether or not western civilisation or even human personhood survives will depend on our choice to embrace and assert the real, and to tell the truth.
As I recall the NatCon conference dinner, in that truly breathtaking venue, I reflect upon a blue whale skeleton named Hope, whose presence sparked a whole train of thought. In our fragile moments we would do well to remember that the skeleton is the most resilient and durable part of the body.
I cannot think of a better way to conclude than to give the last words on ‘identity’ to Hillel the Elder.
If I am not for myself, who will be?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?
Sketchbook pictures by The Sideways Thinker.
Thanks for reading, comments and shares are welcome.
These additional thoughts on Jonah are welcome, thank you. Chantelle Mouffe was perhaps the first to observe the conflict between the right-leaning concept of nation and the supra-national order supported by the left. When this order was human rights, I found myself balanced in the middle. As the global order has swung violently towards imperial technocracy, I (like many on the left) find myself politically homeless.
Thus the issues surrounding citizens, nations, and demos has been troubling me greatly for some time. It was not that long ago that resistance on the political left in the United States was based around a shared vision of what that nation represented... now, it is hard to find any trace of principles in what is advocated.
On Agamben, I'm not sure if you saw the piece I ran at the end of June:
https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/thrown-under-buses
Stay wonderful!