Obedience is Freedom

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To do this, he takes in everything from rave culture and Charles Dickens to hippyish protests against nuclear weapons and the hidden history of London’s outcasts. The sexual deviants from what norms still remain are partly the products of mainstream sexualization. Even for those who understand this intuitively, “obedience” is a hard word, associated at least since Reformation times with coercion and mindless slavishness. By giving into our whims, by indulging our weaknesses, we risk becoming like the mutineers of the HMS Bounty, who drank saltwater and went insane, drifting in a vast and meaningless expanse.

Obedience is Freedom - Jacob Phillips - Google Books

It is surely unnecessary to say that Phillips is not against freedom per se, but rather against the particular kinds of freedoms fetishized today. He believes, exaggeratedly, that many of those who were at Greenham would now be “cancelled or endlessly trolled as conservatives or reactionaries. What the West needs, Phillips concludes, is a “profound reorientation, an undoing” of Enlightenment rationalism, a rebooting so we can once again “function properly with our own solar operating system”. Jacob Phillips, in his brilliant and unusual new book, seeks to challenge this dominant expectation.The virtue of obedience is seen as outdated today, if not downright toxic and yet, are we any freer than our forebears?

Obedience is Freedom - Jacob Phillips - Google Books Obedience is Freedom - Jacob Phillips - Google Books

The virtue of obedience is seen as outdated today, if not downright toxic - and yet, are we any freer than our forebears? However, self-restraint may also allow us to enter into a richer kind of existence, one that is more emotionally satisfying—just as submission to the rhyming rules of poetry has so often spurred literary genius. Conspiracy theories, from 5G wireless mind control to the QAnon cult, may be fueled by “an intuitive sense that our cultural atmosphere is increasingly permeated with things that are unsanitary and deleterious. The book’s title may seemOrwellian in tone, yet Phillips’ argument is precisely the opposite—there is nothing Orwellian or sinister about obedience and freedom. We will rediscover our freedom not through blind submission, but by working out for ourselves, through debate and argument, what is worth obeying.Some friends and acquaintances talked to him about letting go , stepping back and looking after yourself but Phillips rejects the idea that his interests and his mother’s interests were necessarily opposed. Any such attempt after centuries of relativistic thinking—when even the “solar operating system” is being subjected to quantum theorizing—is, Phillips admits, literally “unthinkable.

Obedience is Freedom | Wiley

But there is a great deal of empirical and everyday evidence to suggest that all these liberties (which often amount to mere libertinism) are insufficient in themselves, and not obviously conducive to social stability. Phillips knows this, criticising the “ Boomerweltanshaaung [which] promises the satisfaction of desire”. Many of the demonstrators were mothers—one of them the author’s—whereas modern feminists often seem to believe that procreation is just another oppression. Instead, the author avoids a preachy or condescending tone and guides the reader gently through various themes.Leftists, being more optimistic about human nature and the course of history, have more freedom to insist that what is righteous is inextricable from what is satisfying. Favorites include St John Henry Newman, of course, but my top list would have to be St Padre Pio, St Maximilian Kolbe, and St Louis de Montfort. The True and Only Heaven” is for people like him, and like he sings in his song; “It’s a damn shame what the World’s gotten to, for people like me, and people like you”. In addition to being an accomplished theologian (his work on Newman, among others, is masterful) and a fine translator (he is the man behind the English translation of Benedict XVI’s ‘Last Testament’), this work cements his reputation as a fine essayist in the best of English traditions. Even if we could accept, as we should, that a rock star is not inherently better than an office worker, someone who creates spreadsheets remains liable to envy someone rocking a microphone because he has more fun.

Obedience is Freedom: Phillips, Jacob: 9781509549344: Books Obedience is Freedom: Phillips, Jacob: 9781509549344: Books

This was a protest site set up by women to protest against the presence of nuclear weapons on British soil.Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. What started as an initiative by 36 women was eventually taken up by approximately 70,000 protestors who formed a 23 km human chain in April 1983. Many feel unable to speak freely, their opinions policed by the implicit or explicit threat of coercion. It is also obedience to our better angels, who will find Obedience Is Freedom stimulating and insightful.