In a speech delivered in October 2014, David Brooks offered a fanciful contrast devised by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik between the external and internal Adams. External Adam, or “Adam One,” pursues an “external résumé” of career advancement, rising status, and financial success. Adam Two cultivates “eulogy virtues,” his motto is “Charity. Love. Redemption,” and he values a “serene inner character” and a “quiet but solid sense of right and wrong” more than his portfolio. Assertive Adam One wants to “venture forth,” while virtuous Adam Two desires to “return to roots.” Continue Reading »
Pop music critic Simon Reynolds, in his book Retromania , and style-writer Kurt Andersen, in his “You Say You Want a Devolution” essay, have their finger upon a certain pattern in our contemporary cultural scenes of recyle-ment, repetition, and lack of forward motion. To be more specific, . . . . Continue Reading »
Okay, here’s a shorter way, for those of you who haven’t the patience for my full cinemascopic link-littered prose, to get at what I mean by Intermediate Modernity In Book VIII Republic terms, intermediate-modernity was the era of the self-repressing Oligarchic Soul, and “the . . . . Continue Reading »
