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This is lovely.

Bernard Williams wrote somewhere that certain virtues of character can only be fully realized by people who are completely self-aware, and others only by people who are completely free of self-awareness. I think the trad impulse comes from a (valid) sense of loss at the unavailability of the second set of virtues. But as Freddie says, there's not much you can do about it without choosing self-delusion.

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Embracing the Catholic faith does not, happily, demand a premodern mindset. Doesn’t rule it out, either.

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The idea that people were once *not* in the position of seeing themselves through the lens of the perceptions of others, that people were once *not* introspective seems like just another meta-narrative to me.

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Setting aside the "choosing" of a religion, which seems like sort of a special case, I must respectfully but vehemently disagree with you that a "traditional" way of living necessitates the absence of introspection. Can you not *choose* to learn how to fix things, to be comfortable around firearms, to train in combat sports? These are all in the bucket of what I would call "traditional masculinity," but they don't just happen spontaneously to all the proles outside of Twitter. They require choice and discipline, and have since the days of the Greek & Roman philosophers. Isn't the discipline of mastering one's surroundings, overcoming pain and fear, sort of at the core of what people think being a "traditional" man is?

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This is a very under-appreciated piece.

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