The flame of the West is alive

Music and dogs for the win

The West is spasming, gasping for air. But it is not too late. We can save the West. Music and dogs might help.

My last stop after several weeks of travel brought me to Denver this past weekend for the Genspect conference. Genspect is an organization focused on a “non-medicalised approach to gender diversity.” The conference was heart-breaking and hopeful, both. Many people have their eyes wide open, and are energized and activated to do everything they can to stop the barbarism of using hormones and surgery on young people who don’t feel at home in their bodies.

I spoke to many parents of beloved children who are in crisis. Their children—adolescents and young adults—believe themselves to be the sex that they are not. One father of a young man who believes himself to be female blames himself. The anguished father said “We brought it in to our house. We were good liberals. We sent him to summer camps that, now we can see, were indoctrinating him. We dropped friends when they disagreed with us. We modeled this behavior for him.”

The mom added, nodding sadly, “Everyone had a little bit of Trump Derangement Syndrome back in the day.” Many of us did, yes, us good liberals. Some have still not recovered.

But this is not their fault, those parents. I told them that. Yes, we must take responsibility for what we have said and done. And we must correct our errors. But there are so many forces in play here: Endocrine disruption, money, the schools and the media, and larger societal forces yet.

Endocrine disruption is coming at us from the water that we drink and the air that we breathe, due to the insecticides and herbicides and hormones now flowing into our water supply. Given that atrazine is common in American water, and its presence is known to turn frogs hermaphroditic and demasculinized, why do we imagine that it has no effect on humans? And phthalates and BPA and more, in our food and our fragrances, our containers and our clothes, are also known to disrupt endocrine function. No wonder that some young people are legitimately confused.

Perverse financial interests exist for anyone who profits from turning healthy young people into patients for life. That is what medicalized trans ideology does: puberty blockers are temporary, but cross-sex hormones are forever, and over time, there are more and more drugs required to deal with the effects of being on cross-sex hormones long-term. And if you get “bottom surgery,” there is no end to the medicalized life you will now forever live.

Cultural forces are encouraging children to never become wise to reality. The genderbread person and other nuttery is all over the schools now. Drag queens are reading stories to little ones. Porn is available to all, degrading to both mind and soul. The young are adrift, unsure, scared to interact, and a solution is offered up, a solution to all of their problems: transition to the sex that you are not, and all of your problems will be solved. It comes with a dopamine hit, or several, as an eager community surrounds those who transition, excited to have another in their midst. And the cross-sex hormones must bring euphoria at first, regardless of whether you are a man receiving estrogen or a woman receiving testosterone. A high is a high, and these are powerful drugs. But powerful drugs lose their power over time, the high ever further out of reach. And looking for external solutions to internal problems rarely solves those problems.

As to those larger societal forces: they are Marxist, if you are to believe James Lindsay (and if you don’t, you should consider why, because he is nothing if not careful and thorough). James had this to say at Genspect this weekend: “The thing is not the thing. It’s not about gender. Or race. Or Covid. Or Ukraine. Or Israel….They are not what they appear to be. The thing is not the thing. It’s about revolution.” Consider that we may be being driven out of our minds in service of someone else’s revolution. What would those who would destroy everything build in its place? I hear nothing constructive from the would-be destroyers. They just know that this thing that we have, the West, is not for them.

And yet, in places near and far, the flame of the West is alive.

Across every domain we have these same problems, over and over and over again. We are being damaged and dysregulated by the poisons being poured into our water and air and mouths; those who would control our behavior, who “offer us help” and implore us to “follow the science,” have financial interests outside of our view; we are less connected to one another than ever before, hiding behind screens and avatars; our institutions are torn apart by incompetence, attention-seeking, and the very human desire to be part of the in-crowd. But there is a very good chance that the crowd that you are being told you must be part of is not, actually, the crowd for you.

Resist and desist, rather than remain and defame those who would be skeptical of the new orthodoxy, whatever it is this week. Come through the looking glass, and find those who have resisted compliance, and fought affirmation¹. There are many of us. We disagree about many things. But we cherish freedom, and we welcome newcomers.

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My sign-off for DarkHorse, which seems more apt than ever, is this:

• Be good to the ones you love;

• Eat good food;

• And get outside.

To which I would add two things: music and dogs.

When in Prague two weeks ago, after the launch of the Czech publication of Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide by Institut H21, several of us went to a pub and stayed late. Two Czech men with opposite politics sat across from me, disagreeing, laughing, drinking. I only met them that night, but I feel confident in saying that they are both good men. In part I have that confidence because I watched them describe positions of almost polar opposition—on Trump, on what is being taught in schools, on guns—and they listened to one another, and to others at the table who disagreed or agreed, and they did not dissolve into puddles or erupt in fury. How many places would that be possible in America now?

The director of Institut H21, the amazing Adam Ružička, had brought a guitar that evening, in the hopes that we could sing around an actual campfire after the book launch. Weather did not permit, but he broke out his guitar in the pub instead, and began to play Czech folk songs, of which there are many. I heard estimates that all Czech people know the words to at least thirty folk songs, which they can and will sing along to, given the opportunity.

Adam pulled out his guitar and began playing, and in short order a young man at the next table pulled out a violin and joined. The joy grew, and the singing got louder. A few women from a neighboring room came in and began to dance. And at the third table in the room, a man pulled out an accordion and joined in as well. I know—I must be making this up. Exaggerating. But I am not.

Everyone but us two Americans were singing along, including the men who had been arguing amicably just moments before. When one song ended, another began. The guitar was handed around and played by others before being returned to Adam’s capable hands.

It was late though, well after 1am. The pub was on the bottom floor of a residential building, and it was a Tuesday. The bartender came in from the other room and asked Adam to keep it down. The noble subversion of the Czech spirit kicked in then, inspiring Adam to raise the decibel level considerably, encouraging even more raucous singing, before finishing with a flourish.

Later, the bartender would tell Adam that in his position, he would have done the same thing.

As for dogs: they may yet save us. I say this as a dedicated and life-long cat lover, but also as an animal behaviorist and an evolutionary biologist. Cats are delightful in part because they aren’t fully ours; the domestication process is still underway, and some cats, at least, don’t seem convinced that it was such a good idea to sign up with people in the first place. They are well capable of striking out on their own. Some of the joy of interacting with cats is that they are still partially wild.

In comparison, we have been co-evolving with dogs for longer than with any of our other domesticates—three times longer, in fact. We have had dogs in our lives for 30,000 years by many estimates; agriculture for just a little over 10,000. In many ways, dogs have made us who we are, as much as we have made them who they are. Cats, bless them, aren’t going to save society. But dogs just might.

Dogs are common on the streets of Prague, and in the parks. Leashes are not. Almost the only dogs that I saw leashed in Prague were ones that clearly needed it, dogs that were straining at their leashes and pulling their owners around. This was a tiny minority of dogs. Most dogs walked and ran free, greeting other dogs, investigating smells, and exploring nooks and crannies. Dogs met other dogs, and then their people met, too. This happens with leashed dogs too, but is even more fluid and easy when the dogs are free to do what dogs do.

We should trust organisms with whom we have teamed up. It works well to let them do their thing. It makes little sense to chain them when we walk with them, so long as we have come to agreement about how they should and will behave in public. The mandatory leash laws that are nearly ubiquitous in the United States misunderstand dogs, and give their humans a pass—why bother working with your dog so that he is trustworthy enough to go into public as your partner, if he’s just going to be leashed anyway? A similar argument could be made for children. Parenting that both demands adherence to societal safety standards and encourages exploration is possible. It is, in fact, the only sane way to go about raising a child, or having a dog.

On a trail outside of Denver, I saw a blur of black bounding through the sagebrush, and shortly came upon a woman standing on the trail looking aggrieved that her dog had raced off. But she wasn’t aggrieved, not really. She knew her dog, and he was a good dog. She was concerned about what I would think, because the trail was clearly marked with regard to the necessity of leashes. I told her he was gorgeous, racing free in nature, and he, seeing his human interact with a stranger, decided that this was more interesting than the faint scent of deer, and bounded back to greet me. Such a good boy.

Don’t follow the science, because it’s generally not science at all if you’re being asked to follow it. But do follow the dogs. They know a few things. And despite everything, they are on our side.

1. I wrote about the need to not comply and not affirm at Natural Selections, in “Public Service Announcement to the Mama Bears: Defend Your Children”, and at DarkHorse we turned it into “Do Not Comply / Do Not Affirm” merch as well – available here.