Tea at Trianon: Dualism and Wholeness

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, August 25, 2025

Dualism and Wholeness

The challenges of teaching teens. From El Antiguo:

Teaching the Faith to teenagers is extremely difficult for many reasons. They dislike school (as did I). Although our school is excellent, it still generally operates under modern models of education which prioritize measured achievement over human formation. They are distracted by their changing bodies and interests, which is understandable—but instead of looking to parents and mentors who could help them, they have been conditioned to listen to their peers and social media. They are numb and bored as a result of the gamification, poor-quality media, and dopamine deficiency as a result of technological dependence. The brokenness of the family, the fragmentation of cultural identity, the collapse of genuine community, and the crippling of their imaginative, rational, and moral powers have destroyed their mental health. Their ability to learn and grow, their ability to remember, to be quiet, to self-regulate, to recollect themselves, to ponder, to look, to trust… all of it has been harmed by the realities of modern life.
I recognize these things in myself as well. But after years of reflection, I have found that the root of most of these problems is not merely Sin. Rather, the root of the problem is Sin, but the ability to recognize and address this Sin has been diminished by a severe conceptual mistake which we constantly manifest, and which our children inherit. This is the great mistake of dualism, the separation of the internal reality of the Spirit from the external reality of the Body.
I am not philosophically sophisticated enough to take on the epistemological claims of Rene Descartes and all of the thinkers that have inherited his framework. For me the question is both theoretical and practical.
[I suppose that this stance already pushes back against dualism; I don’t believe that something must be perfectly logical to be true. The Truth accounts for all variables, and our limitations in time and space make perfect perception of the Truth impossible. If something doesn’t work, if it doesn’t apply, we have missed something. Logic is the rational mind at play with imaginary realities, but when we pretend the game is real, we do so at our peril. Reality is that which resists our will to change it. When something works, we may then understand it. But the operation of a principle most often comes before the understanding of it.] (Read more.)