I have been finding it increasingly difficult to find the mental energy to write. Over the past decade I have been active at the blog, this will be the 904th article that I have written. I have done a podcast and recorded my articles. I have organised festivals and conferences. I have been a senor member of a number of organisations and about 6 months ago something happened that has greatly affected me. I was removed as the President of a group in what can only be described as a coup. Everyone who supported me lost and everyone on the other side won, it was a massacre.
Since that time the feeling that I have wasted my time and all of my efforts have only increased. If this is my reward for turning a failing group into a successful one, if this is my reward from the people who are supposed to be on my side, what is it all for?
My aim has always been to achieve things in the real world. To form groups, have conferences, to be a political activists, to fight back against everything that I hate, to make things change. Instead I became a political philosopher and while I had never intended for that I felt I had come up with some things that pointed the way forward. I thought that there had to be others out there who thought like I did, it turns out that there aren't that many. Not even on the right.
Even within the Melbourne Traditionalists that turns out to be true. At the last meeting two members stood up and gave talks on how they became Traditionalists, they talked about religion. I'm not anti-religious, but I always thought that the Melbourne Traditionalists was a political group. But it has never become what I wanted it to be, I have always wanted it to be politically active, to fight back. Instead it has been a social club for people to come and talk about whats wrong with the world. But no matter where you are on the right that is the main topic.
I'm very strange because while I like to complain as much as the next guy I always wanted to make things happen. But I have not achieved that, I have achieved very little. Partly because most people on the right do not want to make things happen. It has been so amazing to me that for a long time I refused to see what was right in front of me. But I truly was amazed at the passivity that inhabits the right. To give but one example, of the five people who support me on Subscriberstar, three of them know me personally. To get any kind of support is like pulling teeth.
Yesterday, two months in, I received my first comment of the year. It is indicative of this blogs place in the world. Myself, this blog and my ideas are quite obscure, rarely do any of them get any interest. To be honest I don't know why I'm doing this anymore.
To Help Support My Work
https://www.subscribestar.com/upon-hope
Upon Hope Blog - A Traditionalist Future
Another Article You Might Like?
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteI found your blog a number of months ago via a sidebar link (I think). Every time you write I mean to leave a comment and I never get back to doing it. I've been working my way through some of your archives as I've been thinking about the difference between being a conservative and a traditionalist both as an American and as a Christian. I've appreciated hearing from someone in a country other than America who has been thinking about these topics.
Specifically I've been contemplating your post "Housewives, Good For the Economy and Society" since I read it.
I relate to your frustration on the blogging level. I started blogging in 2005 and I've gone through various stages with my own blog which morphed into a full-blown website. At heart, I am a writer and probably a philosopher (even though I've never thought about it that way until recently). My life, world events, and family needs have caused me to pivot many times over the years.
Getting paid supporters is difficult and I suspect it is going to become even more difficult in the coming months. I finally decided that I was going to focus on creating my website as a record of my life and not let the need for money drive me any longer. I focus on what I've thought about, what I did, etc. so that hopefully my daughter and her children can read it someday. Since I decided to do it for myself I've enjoyed blogging more again.
I miss the early days of blogging when blogs were where everything happened. Social media seriously damaged them and bloggers gave up so much of their power and freedom when they pivoted to focus on social media.
Thank you for the efforts you've put in. I'm a late comer to your blog, but things you wrote years ago are helpful to me even now. I experience the same thing on my own site. Women will find posts years later and say it is exactly what they need that day. I trust that God will lead people to the right post at the right time and He does.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I am reading. I'm only one person, but I do appreciate all you have done.
Sallie
I read your blog regularly, please don't quit! I don't get many comments, either, but enough views, which is kinda strange:) I do think that many who identify as conservatives don't have much fight left in them, so to say. Too bound by social conventions:)
ReplyDeleteThere is such a lack of true conservatism (most political conservatives don't conserve anything or defend anything) that the toxic woke agenda has no brake. As a Canadian traditionalist I appreciate this blog b/c we are voices crying in the wilderness.
ReplyDeleteI, too, lament the declining energy to fight the good fight: to defend what we love and what we cherish. If there are no boots on the ground then everything on our side gets reduced to mere rhetoric and solipsistic bellyaching.
Wonderful that some of your colleagues have found religion but the vast majority of our churches these days preach the gospel of Derrida and Foucault rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We've even lost that battle.
Like the others who have commented above I want to encourage you to keep going. Sanity is so rare these days it is refreshing to find it.
That said, thank you for all that you have done.
You said "I always thought that the Melbourne Traditionalists was a political group. But it has never become what I wanted it to be, I have always wanted it to be politically active, to fight back."
ReplyDeleteWhat would you do to fight back? Maybe you can still be active- whether it's pointless or not- human condition.
One of the reasons that many don't subscribe perhaps is because media such as Facebook doesn't provide the level of anonymity that those on the traditionalist side require- because they are not objective- and want to bias politics in a particular direction using doxing and cancelling. Perhaps this should be part of our activism to create better platforms- that don't act as a weapon against ourselves. Perhaps media should reward based on views rather than subscribers- but what the media companies value is the knowledge of who you are, how to find you, and how to destroy you- slimy serpentry.
Hi Mr. Moncrieff,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to read about the quite understandable discouragement that you are feeling. It is a particularly difficult time for people on our side. The progressives control pretty much everything now and those who wish to actively fight back against them in the political area must resist the pressure to conform to rules set by the progressives which conformity would render them toothless and anemic (as mainstream or movement "conservatism" has done making itself part of the problem) while also resisting the urge to engage in the sort of battles where anything short of a victory will result in a setback for our side (which has been a recurring problem ever since we were given the first glimmer of substantial hope in decades with the election of the past president of the American republic, the natural abhorrence true traditionalists feel to presidents and republics aside).
I think that one of the reasons why religion is emphasized so much among traditionalists - other than that traditionalists tend to have strong religious beliefs - is that it helps to see that we are participating in a war that spans the ages. Just as the present dominance of our progressive enemies was not accomplished overnight - think of how many traditionalist writers of the past century such as Grant, Weaver, Voegelin, and Oakeshott to name just four, devoted so effort to tracing the progressive takeover over the course of centuries - so we must look at the "counterrevolution" in terms of centuries. That is helpful in avoiding the temptation of despair when confronted with losses and setbacks. Similarly, the religious outlook helps us to see that against appearances and the progressives' constant crowing about how they are on the "right side of history" ours is the side that will ultimately triumph. There is also a practical side to this which is basically summed up in the Breitbart doctrine. Indeed, long before Breitbart put it into words, the strategy of affecting politics by transforming culture in the reverse of how our enemies have done this was taken up by Chronicles Magazine. Would the past American administration have been possible had that not been the case?
The question of why you or I or anyone else on our side does what we do is, of course, a personal question, as well as one that can be discussed in the above manner, and to this side of the question nobody else can really speak. It might be helpful, however, to look at the what rather than the why. You having been speaking truth to a world addicted to lies. That in itself is never a waste of time. I certainly have appreciated your efforts over the years as have the others who have commented above whom, I am sure, represent only a small fraction of those who could say the same.
Your labour is not in vain.
All the best,
Gerry T. Neal
Whether travelling to the peaks of thought or plumbing the depths of history, to think far outside our time is in many ways to commit oneself to being alone. "He who increases in knowledge increases also in sorrow."
ReplyDeleteYour work has made a difference Mark. Take heart in that. There is also a movement among younger guys to "post physique" - while on the outside it seems like vain guys posting their muscles, it's more often used as a social proof among rightleaning men to show they've followed through their words with action. Oftentimes when someone starts getting too philosophical online they're told to "post physique" - it's a great counterbalance to what you've railed against in your work, it encourages people to get out and change their lives and their world. You were ahead of your time in seeing that action had to be taken decades ago, before the squeeze had really begun. The squeeze you were worried about is being keenly felt by many now, and many are baying for action. You were onto it!
My reply to all of these comments can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttps://uponhopeblog.blogspot.com/2022/03/where-to-from-here.html