Foundations of the Right I: Agency

Agency-Sapience as Fundamental to Our Worldview

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Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

— Melville, Moby-Dick

When I was in public school, I had a good friend who moved and went to another school for a few years, some of the most formative years of our lives. When we met back up later all our friends had changed, some of them almost into totally different people, but he said to me “out of everyone I know, you’ve changed the least”. I took this to be a great compliment.

I’m pretty much the same person I was when I was 8 years old, and from then till now, parents, friends, family—everyone I know has laughed at me for getting angry at inanimate objects. It’s one of my personality quirks. When something isn’t working, I don’t just get angry at it; I call it names, I might even throw it away to “spite” it—I take this disobedience personally. I realize this is at times hard to live with. But to say “then just don’t do that” is almost like saying “don’t have a toothache”. There’s something in me given to this response. I think that’s why I love Moby-Dick so much. The white whale is not just a beast, it’s nature personified. Ahab’s grudge is not just against a dumb animal, it’s against the world itself.

I have also always felt the presence of the gods heavy about me. Even as a child, standing among leafless trees sighing in the Boreal blast of late autumn, I could feel the veil between the worlds growing thin, and spirits all around. How could these things be related?

The thread that runs between my love of Moby-Dick, my impatience at a stubborn tool, and my awareness of the gods, is seeing agency in the world. This might seem like something rather abstract, but it has important consequences for the political right, for folkishness, and for having a religious worldview in general.