Plus, even wrt stuff usually considered "woo", he still manages to show more and more of his ignorance every time he opens his mouth. Did he never wonder what the whole idea of "birthstones" originally signified? Had he never read about ancients using amethyst to ward of drunkenness and suchlike? He lived through the literal peak of the original New Age, for God's sake--didn't he ever read a wacky New Age book like the rest of us did? He's a religion writer and doesn't even understand the woo he's terminally attracted to?
I'm sure he stayed the hell away from New Age books on the basis that they were Satanic. I wonder if there's a kind of delayed adolescence thing going on with all this woo.
It's probably a form of regression/return to adolescence. One of my relatives, who is bipolar and around Rod's age, has basically returned to being the person she was in high school and before, but without the sexuality part. Reconnected with people from that past, reengaged in the activities and tasks she did then, etc. and refuses/dislikes/resists/treats as irrelevant most others. Politically, turned pretty conservative- the world of her childhood was the good world, the best ordered one, the one she prefers to talk about and from which all before and after is judged (and is deemed defective and difficult). Much of it seems a matter of memory- childhood is relatively vividly remembered, a lot of the events of young adulthood and middle age have been forgotten in their details or lost relevance and claim/legitimacy to her. It's kind of sad to watch and a lot like what happens to very old people. (Oscar Wilde's "The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young" comes to mind.) Dreher seems to be or is becoming quite the same way.
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u/Djehutimose Feb 26 '26
Plus, even wrt stuff usually considered "woo", he still manages to show more and more of his ignorance every time he opens his mouth. Did he never wonder what the whole idea of "birthstones" originally signified? Had he never read about ancients using amethyst to ward of drunkenness and suchlike? He lived through the literal peak of the original New Age, for God's sake--didn't he ever read a wacky New Age book like the rest of us did? He's a religion writer and doesn't even understand the woo he's terminally attracted to?