The first essay I read by Wendell Berry, who died last night at 92 years old, was his 1987 essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy A Computer.” Berry writes:

Like almost everybody else, I am hooked to the energy corporations, which I do not admire. I hope to become less hooked to them. In my work, I try to be as little hooked to them as possible. As a farmer, I do almost all of my work with horses. As a writer, I work with a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper.

And with that, I was hooked on Wendell Berry.

It’s hard for me to put into words how much Wendell Berry means to me. In an age where everyone does things performatively—reading, writing, politics, love, relationships, all hijacked by the scourge of performativity—Berry practiced what he preached. Berry lived as he taught. To the end, so far as I am aware, he wrote by pen and paper, farmed his family’s land the old fashioned way and defended the agrarian and small town ways of life. In this, Wendell Berry was a radical who lived by the words he wrote.

Wendell Berry was a unique man of letters. His final novel came out just last year, ending his literary career with over 50 books, made up of essays, poetry and novels. Berry singlehandedly continued the tradition of Emerson and Thoreau, espousing the importance of the land and the ideals that humanity must live up to. That he found an audience beyond the farmers and loggers he wrote about testifies to his powers as a writer and truth-teller. Even us city folk were hungry, thirsting, for the world and words of Wendell Berry. His Truths were just so powerful.

He understood that people have to be for something, and that something is not likely to be found in the “maxxing” culture we live in, nor is it likely to be found in the unabashed consumerism that infects our citizenry. If we are on this earth for something, I imagine much of that end looks like the world Wendell Berry dedicated his life to preserving.

There’s much more to say, but his death is still so fresh that I can’t say more than these brief, off the cuff reflections. But I will say this. I feel a bit lost and disoriented today. I feel like I lost one of my North Stars, a writer and thinker who challenged me to think better and oftentimes differently about the world. But he will live on in his writings for generations to come and I feel forever blessed to have encountered them.

Wendell Berry spent his entire life planting the seeds of a movement that he hoped would save us from ourselves. It’s up to us, now, to tend the gardens and fields he left us.

Rest well, Wendell Berry. May you return in peace to the earth you so gently farmed.

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“Just feeling adventurous?” he asked me.

Yeah, I guess you can say that.

I know that at first blush I don’t really present as the adventurous type. I work a decidedly white collar job for a famous white collar employer. I’ve spent my whole life reading and writing and my friends will tell you that that’s what I do for fun. I don’t think anyone who knows me well would say “Oh Phil? My goodness is he an adrenaline junkie or what!”

But lately I’ve been feeling a bit restless and, well, confined. Routine might be good, but monotony is soul crushing. I’ve started to feel really stuck in what Walker Percy called the “everydayness” of life. There’s a lot of rinse and repeat happening in my life and it’s started to become a drop less vivid.

So yeah, you can say that I’ve been seeking adventure. Something needed to change in my life. I needed to feel something different, something other than “the same.” That’s why earlier this week, my buddy Sean and I packed up my car and drove 6 hours into West Virginia to visit New River Gorge National Park. What a time it was.1

After dropping off our stuff at the tiny house we were renting, we headed to the small town of Thurmond, West Virginia. I don’t recall ever being in one spot where I felt both awe and sadness simultaneously. Thurmond was once a bustling town at the heart of West Virginia’s coal industry. C&O Railroad operated through Thurmond, where passing trains were able to fill their cars with coal. At its peak, Thurmond had a bank, post office, hotel, clothing stores—it was a vibrant and robust town. Now the town is all but deserted. The post office is set to be demolished, the storefronts are quasi-museums highlighting the world of yesterday, and the train depot, still active on the Amtrak line, doesn’t function anymore. The last census recorded that 5 people still lived in Thurmond. What was once a thriving coal town now lay in ruin.

Later that night, both of us tired from the long day of driving, Sean and I returned to our cabin and got to grilling, drinking, and sitting by the fire. As night fell and the fire roared, I threw my head back and was overwhelmed by a sight we city folk rarely see—a clear picture of the night sky. Pretty soon I found The Big Dipper. Then, paying close attention to the sky, I saw things shooting about the heavens. “They’re satellites,” Sean said. I was in awe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a night sky so clear before.

The next morning, we set about our first hike: The Endless Wall Trail. The pictures I took don’t really do this hike justice. Once you climb about 400 feet to the ridgeline, you walk for miles along the giant cliffs that make up the New River Gorge. At every lookout point, we stood upon the cliffs and took in the views. As it happens, I love heights, and was more than excited to stand on the edge of a 1000 or so foot cliff. Being on top of those mountains and taking in the views was sublime. I’ve been reliving the feeling of standing at the edge of those cliffs ever since. In fact, I think the adrenaline high hit me more afterwards. I’m glad I was able to be present and take in the view for all its glory.

After the Endless Wall Trail, we stopped back at the visitor’s center for a spot of lunch before driving down the old mining road to the other side of the gorge. This route, which takes 45 minutes in its entirety, is what the bridge you can see in the above picture was meant to fix. That bridge took a 45 minute drive and turned it into a 45 second drive. Nevertheless, I love a good road, and the windy road down into the bottom of the gorge had me smiling the entire way.

Eventually we made it to our next trailhead, the Kaymoor Mine Trail. This trail takes you up to the remnants of the now abandoned Kaymoor Mine. The mine was in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where miners exploited the New River Coalfield’s Sewell Seam of “smokeless” low-volatile bituminous coal. Here too, there was once a bustling town that supported the mine. All of it, gone. The mine is completely overgrown and the remaining structures are crumbling.

After the Kaymoor hike, we made a quick stop for some beer at a local brewery before heading back for another night of grilling by the fire and admiring the night sky.

The next morning, we made one final stop on our way out, this time to the Grandview Overlook. Let’s just say it lives up to the name.

It was a truly unforgettable trip. I can’t encourage the park highly enough.

My trip to the New River Gorge was breathtakingly beautiful. But it was also so much more. My few days in the gorge was both a humbling and spiritual experience.

I’ll begin with how humbling it all was, and this was true in several ways.

One of the most visceral moments on the trip took place in a Kroger parking lot. As Sean and I headed out of the store back to my car, a gentleman was walking into the store absolutely covered in soot and coal dust. And I mean covered, head to toe, in black dust. I did a double take as he walked by. I’d never seen a coal miner before.

When we sat in my car, Sean said to me: “You know, if the people in Washington all disappeared, the country would get on fine. But if people like that guy disappeared, we’d pretty much have nothing.” That’s a sentence that really gets to you.

People in DC (and frankly most white collar jobs) think that we rule the world, that without us the world falls into some sort of Hobbesian state of nature that is nasty and brutish. We think we make the world go round. We think that we’re the cream of the crop, the most successful ones doing the most consequential work. And I’m not doubting that some people really do serious work that matters. But people like this coal miner—they are really the ones who make the world go round.

Just think about it for a second. Without the miners and loggers and farmers and oilrig workers, we don’t have much of anything. We’d have no food and no energy to power modern life.

To say that we forget about these people is to describe the situation euphemistically. We ignore them entirely.2 If memory serves, Wendell Berry writes that the US Census at one time stopped bothering to count the people who live on farms; they were too few to matter. But farmers and miners and truckers are the backbone of this country. We ignore them to our detriment, a detriment fueled by pride.

Which leads me to another way that the trip humbled me. Though my heart yearns for the countryside and village, I’ve spent my entire life in cities on the east coast. What that translates into is that I’ve been around a very particular demographic of people. But the majority of America’s citizens live in the flyover states and they live the types of lives I saw in West Virginia. They don’t care much for politics, they spend more time outdoors and live in close proximities to their neighbors. They have a particular type of grit and resilience that city folk don’t have. They are not obsessed by the age of plenty that we live in.

And my goodness was I jealous. I was jealous of being away from the noise of the 21st century, away from the madness of crowds, away from bullshit politics and culture wars. In the West Virginia towns I visited, I saw a version of human flourishing that too many of us will never know. What a shame that is.

In an age of plenty, seeing beauty and fulfillment in less is profoundly humbling.

Finally, let me comment on the spiritual side of the trip.

I’ve written before about beautiful architecture and how good it is for the soul. Sir Roger Scruton said that when we lose beauty, we lose the meaning of life. He was correct. I’m blessed to be able to work in one of the world’s most beautiful buildings. I visit the Capitol Rotunda at least once a week and it always fills my heart with joy. Genuine architectural beauty is a delight.

But natural beauty just hits differently. Natural beauty has a vastness to it that manmade beauty cannot achieve. When you stand on the cliffs of the New River Gorge, you look out into the distance into what looks and feels like eternity. You feel the expansiveness of the soul but also a beautiful smallness. Sitting around a fire and looking up to the heavens and seeing the stars that are millions of lightyears away is a spiritual experience. You feel small, but also connected to the infinity of the Divine.

And it’s that sense of infinity, that feeling of vastness, that I think is necessary for spiritual growth. If we believe that the soul is a piece of God, then we believe that there is a part of us that taps into infinity. And the opposite of infinity is limitation. Modern life is limiting. We sit in small rooms and type on small screens that are sent to even smaller devices. We sit in small cars with roofs barely above our heads. Modern life feels claustrophobic and that stifles the soul.

The antidote is to set the soul free by stepping outside the bounds of physical limitations. God gave the Jews the Torah on a mountain in a desert because you need the vastness of the desert to appreciate the vastness of Torah. He didn’t give the Torah in a cubicle. I cannot help but think that the reason our Patriarchs lived off the land as shepherds and farmers is because it’s being outdoors away from physical limits that offer the best reception to the Divine. I can’t possibly capture it here, but I felt a stirring of the soul standing atop those cliffs the likes of which I haven’t felt in ages.

So go climb a mountain. Prove to yourself that you can summit peaks you thought impossible. Go see the beauty of this country. Go meet people who live differently from you and learn from them, hear from them. And go set your soul free by allowing it to breathe in the vastness of God’s beautiful creation.

You’ll thank me later.

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I guess you can say that I’ve come to like a drink here and there.

But truth be told, until last year, I’d fallen out of favor with whiskey and beer. And I never dared to get involved in Tequila, which, I believed, was the drink of choice for all domestic assault suspects (I say this mostly in jest). Whiskey stopped being exciting, the regular shelf offerings were all a bit boring, and so I switched to Gin, the best of the clear spirits by far. Gin not only has an incredible history behind it, but it 1) treats scurvy and 2) never gets you hungover. A cold gin and tonic after a hard day’s work outside? Heaven on earth. And let’s not mention the Bee’s Knees cocktail, a prohibition era drink that’s just about my favorite thing to drink. I became content being a Gin drinker.

But then last year I decided to give whiskey and tequila another shot. In a post I made last year On Human Connection, I wrote about visiting a local liquor store in Baltimore where I snagged a store pick of Wilderness Trail Hi-Rye Bourbon and a bottle of Fortaleza, launching my newfound love of great spirits.

And now, since finding the Spirit Shop on Falls Road and its incredible owner Peter, (more on Peter later) my collection has increased significantly, as has my enjoyment of fine spirits. So I wanted to write about it.

Bourbon

One of the reasons I enjoy fine spirits is because of the history and craft that goes into making it. Bourbon is basically inseparable from the American founding (although beer is what the Pilgrims had on their ships). Bourbon will always be America’s spirit, always more so than beer.

For years, bourbon to me meant the regular shelf offerings you saw at your local liquor store: Maker’s Mark, Bulleit, Jim Beam, etc. And those are good products, but they get really boring really quick.

But then the bourbon boom happened about 10ish years ago. Smaller, craft producers started opening up all over the country, legacy producers expanded their offerings and NDPs, or non-distilling producers, entered the scene. These are boom times for bourbon drinkers.

To get back into the bourbon scene, I was told that I needed to start doing a few things differently. First, I needed to start drinking higher proof whiskey. Your standard shelf offerings I mentioned before all typically clock in at around 93/94 proof. Though the low proof makes the spirit easy to drink with minimal burn, you do not get to really experience and taste the bourbon’s flavors. So, I needed to start drinking higher proof whiskey, putting a minimum purchase for me at 100 proof.

And then I needed to pay attention to the different “mash bills” that compose bourbon. To legally be considered bourbon (for bourbon is federally regulated), the mash bill, or the mixture of grain inside the whiskey, has to be at least 51% corn. Classic bourbon will have corn, rye and malted barley inside of it. But there is so much more here to explore. What about wheated bourbons? Wheated bourbons include, obviously, wheat in the mash bill, making for a truly different flavor profile and drinking sensation. What about high-rye bourbons, where there is more rye than typically put in. And then of course is Rye itself, which must contain at least 51% rye, making for a much more spicy drinking experience. Once I started paying attention to the mash bills, and started experiencing how differently they taste, bourbon became so much more exciting and enjoyable. And we haven’t even touched finished whiskeys yet!

Tequila

For years, I hated tequila. Tequila was what frat boys drank and what domestic abusers drank before being handcuffed.2 Not for me, I said.

But then, like hearing a voice from Heaven, I had the realization that I had been experiencing tequila all wrong.

Most people like tequila because it is sweeter and easier to drink than whiskey. What I hadn’t realized until recently is that most of the tequila that people drink contain additives that artificially flavor and color the tequila. Every celebrity tequila, every popular “top shelf tequila” like Clase Azul and Don Julio 1942, all have additives. It’s those additives that make those tequilas so sickly sweet and, might I add, are what get you hungover and make your stomach upset. If you know of tequila as Clase Azul or 1942 or Casamigos or Addictivo, you really have never had real tequila. Hell, you’ve probably never even tasted agave! Moreover, tequila, unlike bourbon, is unaged in its purest expression. Blanco tequila is what you really want to sip, though the world of additive filled tequila has convinced the public that blanco is only for mixing with pineapple or grapefruit juice. Not at all, amigo.

Realizing this truth, I set out to find additive-free tequila, traditionally made by master distillers in Mexico. The first bottle I found was a bottle of Tequila Ocho Reposado. It was love at first sip. I consider that bottle to have sparked my newfound love of tequila, and I’ve been sharing the gospel of additive-free tequila to anyone who will listen. That’s why I’ve got some bottles of Fortaleza, Cascahuin, Lalo and more. If you’ve never tried some yourself, come on by.

Beer

I’ve got a best friend named David who hates beer. And it makes me sad because he’s just never had good beer. He recently tried his first ever Wihenstephaner and though beer still isn’t for him, he couldn’t deny that it was decidedly better than the cheap brown water most people associate with “beer.”

Beer, the lightest and most welcoming of the alcoholic delights, has been given a bad rap by Big Beer (and I can already hear another buddy Matthew getting upset about this).3 Big Beer, the people who make Coors and Bud and the rest, has its purpose, namely, to provide cheap ways for college students to get drunk. But as my tour guide at the Baltimore Guinness Brewery told me, you can’t make a good beer in 5 days, which is what those companies do. Good beers are 30 day beers and are carefully crafted. Though they may be made at an industrial scale, they are not industrial beers.

There are thousands of craft breweries all over the country; they seem to spread like wildfire. And there are also breweries that have been brewing beer for, quite literally, a thousand years. Beer is much more than the cheap beers you drank in college. And although Germany has the best beer in the world, there are craft breweries doing incredible things here in the states. Learning the difference between ales and lagers and pale ales and stouts and porters is what opens your eyes up to the magic of beer and I highly suggest you dive in. If you gag at the sound of beer, let me pour you something else.

But What’s This All About?

My point in writing this essay is not to write a love affair to alcohol. That’d be weird. There is an overarching theme that I want to express that’s more than just a passion for good booze.

Enjoying fine whiskey and beer and tequila does three things for me, three things that I think we should all try to take more advantage of enjoying.

First is the craft of it all. We live in an era of fast fashion, cheap gadgets and automated delivery services. There’s almost nothing made like they used to anymore. Real craftsmen and artisans are few and far between and as I’ve said elsewhere, there is nothing like witnessing a master craftsman at work.

High quality spirits are one product category where the craft is not only alive and well, but is a craft that you can go witness for yourself too. In the past few months, I’ve taken a tour of both the Baltimore Guinness Brewery and the Sagamore Rye Distillery. One of my best memories from my childhood is touring the Omegang Brewery in Cooperstown NY with my great uncle on a camping trip. These tours are mind-blowing experiences. You see firsthand the level of care and attention to detail that goes into making these products and are left truly in awe. Making booze is a thinking man’s craft and it is just so fascinating watching the process happen before your very eyes. I love the variety of it all, the different processes distillers go through to make different tasting spirits (toasted, double oaked, etc), the science and art behind it. It’s incredible. I mean, do you know how many different varieties of hops there are!?

It’s also fascinating, and kind of inspiring to see especially with bourbon and tequila, how much nature plays a role in the spirit. Tequilas made in the lowland/valleys of Jalisco in Mexico taste earthy and vegetal whereas highland tequilas are sweeter and brighter. Agave crushed by a tahona, a large stone wheel, tastes different than agave crushed in a mill. The rickhouses, the large warehouses that store barrels of bourbon for aging, can make all the difference in how a bourbon tastes. There is a reason that the most coveted bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey is named after the literal hill that the whiskey is aged on, Coy Hill. The way the air hits that hill literally makes it taste differently than other rickhouses on the Jack Daniels property; it’s what gives it its famous banana taste. Something about the airflow at the famous Deatsville Rickhouse on the Heaven Hill property gives those bourbons a distinct flavor. It’s just damn cool to see Mother Nature at work. Appreciating the craft is part of the enjoyment here and in a world devoid of true crafts, every well made spirit is a nod to master craftsmen at work. When you clink glasses, think of the masters who made that pour possible.

Second is how slow appreciating fine spirits has to be. If you’re going to taste the graham cracker notes in the Green River Wheated Full Proof, you can’t just pour some into a shot glass, say l’chaim or salud and throw it down the hatch. No, you need to be present and attentive. You need to think about what you’re tasting and smelling. I must say that I find appreciating whiskey and tequila a very grounding experience. Sometimes if I need to slow down, either physically or mentally, a dram of whiskey I really want to appreciate will do the trick. No getting drunk necessary.

And finally is the community and social aspects of spirits. Look, I don’t drink alcohol for effect. I think deliberately getting drunk is morally vapid (though ending up drunk after quality time with friends and family is morally virtuous) and I can count on one hand all the times I’ve properly been unable to operate heavy machinery. Bill Joel was right about sharing a drink called loneliness being better than drinking alone. I love fine spirits for the community that surrounds them.

I briefly mentioned Peter from the Spirit Shop on Falls Road in Baltimore. He’s probably worthy of his own blog post, but let me just say this; he’s doing much more than running a liquor store. Peter does free tastings every week, from bourbon to tequila to more niche spirits. In doing so, Peter brings together people who love the craft and who love experiencing the craft with other people. At every tasting I’ve been to of his, I’ve met great people who are excited to share their favorite pours and compare notes. And because Peter himself is such a social guy, he is attuned to what his regular customers like. A new wheated bourbon comes in and voila, a text from Peter saying “stop by, I got something you’d like to taste.” And not to mention that he doesn’t price gouge like many other stores (I recently saw a bottle I would kill to own for over 100% markup. I was infuriated. Peter would never and never does do crap like that.) Peter is just the best.

At my favorite bar in Baltimore, The Elk Room, I love nothing more than chatting with Bartender Bodie about his newest concoctions and favorite new products that have come into the bar. I love talking to people at distilleries and breweries and seeing passionate people enjoy life. I love when friends come over to my place and are excited to try something new. I love when a colleague of mine finds a bottle he knows I’ll like and gifts it to me and then I do the same in return. It’s the social environment that a good pour creates that makes this passion and hobby so exciting.

So next time you reach for a bottle, stop to admire what you’re drinking. Appreciate the craft, savor the taste, smile at your friends and family and remember that Churchill won the war a wee little bit buzzed.

L’chaim.

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Many of my professors stress that they want to hear more from us and encourage us to share our opinions and novel ideas on the subject matter. Indeed I have lost points in some of my participation grades for too often quoting renowned subject experts and scholars rather than offering up some original thought. But should young, budding scholars like myself really be encouraged to sooner share their own thoughts rather than comment on the wisdom of others? I think not. Students need to be told that while they of course need to think for themselves, they cannot truly think without first paying homage and deference to those giants who came before them.

Oh, how things have gotten so much worse.

Our age is one in which reflective, deep study is suspiciously radical and a relic of a bygone era (an era that I’m old enough to have briefly lived in). Instead, the “public square” that social media pretends to be is filled with people who are damn confident in their expertise on, well, whatever the hot topic of the day is. “What do you mean you don’t have an opinion on how to open the Strait of Hormuz?!” says the anonymous monkey on Twitter. It’s absolutely maddening. It’s also gross, destructive and downright annoying.

This is not only a social media problem, however. The world of Think Tanks, what I call Thinktankastan, was once a towering force in American society. During the golden age of American think tanks, especially in the defense world, brave and courageous scholars quite literally saved the world from nuclear Armageddon. When President Reagan set his sights on building a ballistic missile defense array over the continental United States, he relied heavily on the Heritage Foundation to come up with the details. Nowadays? Nowadays, much of Thinktankastan is filled with young kids in their 20s pontificating about the world, stroking their chins while cosplaying as characters in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan. With the pretty sole exception of the Hoover Institute (and maybe parts of the RAND Corporation), which decidedly employs only world-renowned experts much later in their careers, I’m not sure that there any all that many Think Tanks that do serious thinking. It’s all just glorified commentary.

But Thinktankastan is just reacting to the current culture in the West, which prizes quick, curt and edgy commentary on whatever the current moment is talking about. Commentary, not real thought. In our social media age, everyone is writing and Tweeting about stuff for the sake of writing and Tweeting about stuff and not a damn is given if you are either saying something worthy or are yourself worthy of saying something. I know that Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Sure, have an opinion, go for it. But maybe don’t pretend that scrolling on Twitter has made you an expert on, say, military strategy and airpower.

Which leads me to military strategy and airpower. I’m not an expert on anything, really. But if there is an area that I have more than basic proficiency in, it’s military strategy. As it became clear that the United States and Israel were both going to engage Iran militarily, I expressed my reservations about the success of any mission that relied mostly (exclusively?) on airpower. You cannot change regimes from the sky, I argued, and airpower in its modern variant is unlikely to bend the will of the enemy (especially since we no longer engage in strategic bombing à la Curtis LeMay). Having shared my thoughts on my WhatsApp status, I was made aware that I had been living a lie. I had thought that I was the only Orthodox Jewish military strategist around. Boy, was I mistaken! For days, I was inundated with messages from people telling me that I was flat out wrong, that I had no idea what I was talking about, that I had somehow lost my way about being supportive of ending the Iranian nuclear program. Again, I’m not Giulio Douhet or Billy Mitchell. Again, an expert I am not. But I have devoted years to studying military strategy, so I hoped people would have engaged with my arguments rather than quickly dismiss them. Mistaken yet again.

Everything about the modern world lends itself to this shallow sense of “knowledge” which itself carries a deep sense of entitlement. You cannot learn things in any meaningful way from short form content on X or YouTube or Instagram (and let’s not even mention the Chinese propaganda that is all of TikTok). You become knowledgeable by spending years studying and reading old books and talking to people greater and older than yourself and then sitting with these thoughts while they stew in your mind. (See more in an essay I wrote for my buddy James at The Broken Binnacle). We are so quick, and I’ve been guilty of this myself, to just denounce any idea we don’t instinctively agree with it. It’s the antithesis of learning. In my First Things essay, I referred to a passage from the great Talmudic sage R’ Hayyim of Volozhin that bears repeating here:

Jewish tradition teaches that one should “let thy house be a house of meeting for the Sages and sit in the very dust of their feet, and drink in their words with thirst.” In the original Hebrew, the word that means “sit” by the dust of their feet, mitabek, has a root that also means “wrestle.” Picking up on this textual nuance, the great 18th century Talmudist R’ Hayyim of Volozhin notes: We, too, have access to the wisdom of the greatest teachers of previous generations through the many books that have been published. By purchasing these books, we turn our homes into a meeting place for the Sages. We are required to ask, challenge, and debate their teaching- to wrestle in their dust…However, we must remember that we sit in the dust of their feet— that our understanding is but a drop in the ocean of their vast knowledge— and approach the discussion with proper respect. It is entirely possible that our strongest questions might simply result from a lack of comprehension of the author’s logic.

The intellectual discipline and humility that R’ Hayyim of Volozhin describes is all but dead. Instead, we have what I call the podcastification of everything. Everyone not only has an opinion, but everyone has a podcast to go along with it. I used to have a podcast, and though I ironically despise them, I understand the fun that is the microphone as a creative outlet. But even in the five years since I last had mine, the world of podcasts has become a different beast entirely. Today, the Vice President of the United States goes on podcasts to hash out foreign policy (how he has time for that I don’t know). Today, young people in their 20s pass sweeping judgements on the supposed hypocrisy of an entire segment of their own community. Today, podcasts can help decide elections. The problem with the podcastification of everything is that success is measured in views, and nothing increases views like radicalism and edginess. Wanna go viral online? Say something crazy on a podcast. Say “in my opinion” with some rhetorical flourish designed to mask gilded thoughts. Nuance? Who has time for nuance? Who wants to listen to nuance when you can get your heart rate and blood pressure up listening to someone scream into the wind? Because too little people want nuance, the podcastification of our society continues to reward the extremists and alienate those genuinely searching for Truth.

So as I’ve called on readers to do before, stop engaging in this type of anti-truth, anti-intellect behavior. Stop listening to random podcasts with random guests talking about random things above everyone’s paygrade. Stop engaging with punditry. It’s bad for the soul, because the soul craves Truth, and there is scant little of that anywhere online. Instead, believe in the long, cobblestoned path towards Truth and enlightenment, read old books and talk to old people, have the humility to admit that you don’t know the answers to all of life’s great existential and policy questions, and have the courage to deny proffering an opinion you have not yet formed.

That’s just my opinion, at least. But maybe I’m wrong about all of this. Honestly, what do I know?

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First, I need to contextualize my recent decision to start going to the gym and getting more physically active. I recently had some bloodwork done that, among other things, showed that I was pretty deficient in Vitamin D. Which, you might recall, is the essential vitamin you get from being exposed to the big yellow thing in the sky. As such, I started taking prescription strength Vitamin D and I’ve genuinely never felt this good. I have more energy, greater focus, greater mobility and less brain fog. And these changes are not just in my head; people have noticed that I appear to be, well, a bit better. Big win for big vitamins.

All of this prompted a good hearty laugh from my buddy Sean. Sean and I went to grad school together. In addition to being a decorated noncommissioned Air Force officer, he’s also a role model for me in a lot of ways. He’s just a really great influence in my life, even though we can sometimes vehemently disagree about the causes of war and strategy and whether finite resources should go to a children’s cancer hospital when they could instead go towards national defense. When I told Sean about the bloodwork, late on the Saturday night I got the results back, he laughed a laugh helped on by some whiskey, because he long suspected that I might be low in Vitamin D. And as much as I love proving Sean wrong, I have the texts to prove that he did, in fact, say that to me some time ago. Certain Air Force officers who spend much time either indoors or in areas of the world that get little sunlight are told by the Air Force to take Vitamin D specifically to combat the symptoms I was experiencing. This was just another instance where I should have just trusted Sean implicitly.

Sensing my newfound enlightenment, Sean made his conversionary pitch. Maybe instead of searching for other, more artificial ways to better my life, especially my mental life, I should return to more natural things. You know, like sunlight. And working out. And long walks along the beach. And clean food. “It might change your life,” he said. Well, Sean should start a new religion, because I put my faith in him and said fine, I’d try those things.

But there was a catch. I hate the gym. I’ve always hated the gym and the culture associated with it. Thankfully, Sean promised to show me a different side of the gym and physical fitness that would assuage the fears and hatred I had of that space. So did Jackson, a dear friend and colleague in the Senate, himself an award winning track runner and the diametrical opposite of a gymbro. Over the months that we’ve known each other, Jackson has shared with me how his physical fitness journey has been an incredible blessing in his life and I’ve always been moved by the passion he puts into his fitness. And so, early on Sunday morning a few weeks ago, the three of us met just outside DC for my first workout. And—gosh I hate to admit it—I really enjoyed it.

So I have some explaining to do. What is it about the gym that I always hated? And what, if anything, does modern gym culture tell us about modern life?

People who take the intellectual life seriously tend to vacillate between reading and writing. Obviously both are important, but if you must choose, I think the accepted bit of wisdom has always been that one should read over write.

If we zoom out a bit, I think the average person tends to look at himself and think that, generally speaking, there are two parts to himself that he can further develop: he can further develop his metaphysical side (his mind, his intellect, his soul) or he can further develop his physical side. Both are worthy of bettering, for sure. But I have always thought that if one must choose, he should choose to develop his metaphysical side over the physical. I believe there is a moral obligation to being intelligent and, since we all die at the end, the only things we can leave behind that truly matter are metaphysical goods. To me, the gym was always the place that proclaimed the triumph of the physical over the metaphysical, an idea I think most organized religions vehemently reject. The gym was the place where people worked to better a body that was loaned to them by God, and will one day be returned to Him like dust of the earth, while ignoring the soul that itself is a piece of God.

But I only thought this way of the gym because I’ve grown up in the 21st century. A profound shift in the way we treat our bodies occurred at the dawn of the 21st century and it’s worth reflecting on what happened.

If you go on YouTube and search for how to do any exercise in the gym, you are going to be shown a video, most likely of a man, who is absolutely jacked. He has arms the size of logs, veins that can be spotted from space and a single digit body fat percentage. What you will see, in other words, is a very modern (and likely artificial) specimen. Go back and look at photos of men from any other period before the 21st century and you don’t see anyone who looks like that. You will see people who are physically fit, no doubt. But no one ever looked the way that modern gymbros do. It’s unnatural to look that way.

Here’s what happened. Until the modern era, the name of the game was physical fitness. People intuitively understood that we are trapped in these physical bodies, so we might as well take care of them. But people achieved physical fitness in very natural ways. Those who worked with their hands, in farms and in factories, got fit by doing their jobs. I recall reading that a young recruit into the First World War thought basic training was an absolute joke compared to the level of fitness his job on the farm required. My grandfather, an 18-wheeler mechanic until he retired some years ago, was wickedly strong, though he looked nothing like a gymbro. The most physically fit person I know today is probably my friend the farrier. I’d bet lots of money that his physical strength and endurance is much greater than nearly anyone in the gym.

But even those people who didn’t work manual jobs, their lives had more physical movement than ours. Life before the 21st century was never this sedentary. People walked more, for instance. Cities, especially the unwalkable kind that we Americans are keen on building, coupled with the rise and availability of the automobile, meant that we no longer walked as much as we used to. And walking, just plain ‘ol walking, is one of the best things a person can do for his overall physical health. Unless you make a conscious effort, almost no one these days naturally puts in 10K steps a day.

And finally, it was much more common for people of all ages to play sports back in the day. Whether it was kids hitting a baseball with a stick on the street or more organized recreational sports, people just moved around more. Now, we bowl alone. It’s hard to get a pickleball game going because everyone is “too busy” with other things (nonsense, of course). Sports are hard work and doomscrolling is easy so why work hard when cheap dopamine is available with an internet connection?

All of which is to say that physical fitness was easier to improve naturally before the modern era and the rise of Big Gym. Our disembodied world has literally divorced us from our bodies.

But gym culture in its modern variant is more than a place to put in conscious effort to increase your physical fitness and strength. Modern gym culture is dominated by an aesthetic culture, not a practical fitness culture. Let me highlight this in two different ways.

Over the weekend on X, a photo of a shirtless Roger Federer went viral, with people commenting negatively that he looks kind of “meh.” No 6 pack abs, no large veins, fairly skinny arms. It was a bit distressing seeing people negatively comment on Federer’s physical appearance and forgetting the fact that the picture was taken while he was at his prime of being the best tennis player in the entire world. It almost makes you wonder if vain looks are all that they’re cracked up to be. Maybe aesthetics don’t translate into practical strength after all. I don’t believe anyone ever saw Federer at his prime and thought “man, if only his biceps filled out his sleeves more.”

Which leads me to a second story. After recently touring a potential gym, I had this thought that perhaps my friends in the military experienced a physical fitness culture decidedly different from the modern gym culture. So I called a buddy of mine who recently retired as a Navy SEAL. Yes, for those wondering, having a friend who was a SEAL never gets old.

I asked him to describe the fitness culture during his time in service. He told me that the PT culture in the SEALs is all about practical fitness. If you are a SEAL and your buddy gets shot in the line of fire, you need to be able to rescue him to safety. Which is why my friend could, at his prime, run a sub 6-minute mile while also being able to bench press 400 pounds. Otherworldly? You’re goddam right it is.

He also made it very clear to me that even at his prime, he never looked the way that modern gymbros do. The modern gymbros might have bigger arms, but could never do as many pull ups as he could. The same is true for my old Krav Maga sensei. He was always very lean, never particularly big, but could punch and kick harder than anyone else. I think this is important to remember.

The point am I making here is that the gym culture that I felt repelled was and is the aesthetic culture all too prevalent on social media today, all too often fueled by supplements that are anything but natural, not the practical fitness culture that athletes and other high-performers partake in. I think more people would be happier in their own bodies and in their own physical fitness journeys if fitness influencers, you know, stopped harming everyone.

So my fitness journey, the side of the gym that Sean is showing me, is going to be a practical fitness journey, not an aesthetic one.1 What that means for now is a good deal of cardio (gonna try skipping rope!) with some practical strength training. When my schedule opens up and my life looks a bit different, I hope to get back into the dojo to train martial arts (which still is one of the best things I did for years) and perhaps even try my hands and feet at CrossFit, which I know so many people really enjoy.

Ultimately, if I stick to my goals of getting stronger and being more physically active, while doing my best to pay no attention to the negative and harmful social media fueled aesthetic gym culture, I’ll inevitably be leading a healthier life that makes me happy.

And I’ll do it all without a fitness tracker. Screw you, fitness trackers.

See you in the gym.

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It drove me mad.

Fitness trackers like the FitBit and Whoop are problematic for several reasons. First, you are awash in data that is meaningless and irrelevant for most (all?) people. What the hell is a sleep score? Did General Eisenhower know his sleep score? If you aren’t a runner or athlete, do you really know the difference between heart rate zones? Do you even care? Do you know what your resting heart rate should be? Are these the things you should even learn from an app and fitness tracker? And then there’s the flip side, which is that these fitness trackers tell you things you know biologically. If you wake up tired in the morning and don’t feel rested, do you really need a watch or fitness tracker to tell you it’s because you got 4 hours of sleep? The answer, sadly, is apparently we do. In our disembodied world, we quite literally stopped listening to our bodies. And these bodies, these incredible things that the Almighty has loaned us, are pretty damn good at telling you how you are feeling and why.

Second, fitness trackers are part of a nasty and dehumanizing wellness/health/fitness culture. The podcaster Steven Bartlett recently went viral for talking about the horrific, life-altering, pernicious, deprave consequences he endured from—get this—having a couple glasses of wine. Check it out for yourself (trigger warning) here.

You know, men used to fight in wars and build bridges.

But back to Steven. I mean, it’s laughable. Someone so attuned to their apparent wellbeing and fitness, so eager to know about his body that he wears a fitness tracker, someone trying to get strong and tough and resilient has the endurance and shelf-life of a banana? If a couple glasses of wine without getting you drunk has these deleterious effects on your wellbeing (and heaven should forbid you podcast worse than yesterday), you are not well and healthy. You are not optimizing anything, except maybe your ego. Yes, if you are someone like my colleague Jackson and are yourself a champion runner, fitness trackers like his Garmin are useful for serious athletic training. But if you are a regular bloke, do you really need a fitness tracker to “optimize” your wellness so that you can send slack messages better than yesterday?

Finally, and most importantly, fitness trackers only look at a very narrow metric of health. Let’s pause to reflect on this. We begin with a story.

Last week, while I still had my FitBit on my wrist, I had a couple of friends over one night (we’ll call them D and C) to celebrate D’s recent graduation from law school. And as sometimes happens when people see my impressive liquor cabinet, a round of drinking began as we toasted D’s hard work and future success. And then another round, this time to C’s success. And another to mine. And then another round. And—I mean, how can I say no to some more of The Keeper’s Release from Maker’s Mark?—another. We all got a bit drunk (sorry Ma) before I eventually and reluctantly sent the guys home. Even I, a man blessed by the Gods with Soviet levels of alcohol tolerance, met my match with enough drams of 109 proof bourbon.

Golly, it was a grand old time. We did nothing but laugh that night and create great, core memories. And my liquor cabinet appreciated the love and attention it rightly craves but rarely gets.

Needless to say, my sleep was terrible that night. My FitBit shamed me in the morning when it told me that my sleep score was “Poor.” It also told me that my heart rate was slightly elevated, and that I should monitor it.

It’s called a hangover, stupid. I know I slept bad (drink will do that to you) and I know that my heart was working a bit harder to compensate. I know this because my body was telling me this. I didn’t need a fitness tracker to tell me something I knew biologically.

But what bothered me more was what my fitness tracker didn’t tell me, which was that my night of drinking with the boys was actually healthy.

Health cannot only be understood as the things you put into your body or the amount of preacher curls your arms can do. Health has to be understood as overall wellbeing, which includes physical health and spiritual and moral health. It is incredibly healthy (the research here is abundant) to hang out with your friends and laugh. Just like it is healthy to be part of organized religion, to exist within community, to love your home and place. Loneliness is quite literally worse than smoking cigarettes, though rarely do people talk about how hard it is to find social settings to hang with friends as a “health crisis.”

Sir Roger Scruton, my intellectual hero, wrote about this years ago in an essay everyone should read. Inspired by his essay, I’ve asked the following question to parents many times: if you had to choose (and there are only two options here), between your child being addicted to smoking or being addicted to the vices of the internet, which would you choose?

No one has ever answered anything other than that they’d rather their kid smoke.

And of course that’s the answer. bUt SMokInG iS BAd FOr YoU! Yes, but. Smoking cigarettes merely affects the body, while keeping the moral nature of the user intact. The internet, that great mistake we inflicted upon mankind, corrupts the soul, destroys it, and then tramples on the ashes. The more important metrics of health are greatly risked by the internet in ways that smoking could never touch. I’m obviously not saying you should smoke. I’m just highlighting a very real difference between modern health culture and real, human wellbeing.

To be attuned to one’s moral and spiritual health is something that fitness trackers could never dream about measuring. Instead, they reduce the world to metrics that are branded as a pathway to some optimal physicality, while, as seen above, giving you the endurance, strength and grit of a banana.

So screw you, fitness tracker. I’ll take my night out with the boys where we have one too many and then pray to my God in the morning for the headache to go away sooner rather than later.

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To be clear, my thoughts about AI are written in ink that doesn’t dry instantly; I’m always rethinking my thoughts, wondering if and how I am wrong, reading new things, contemplating new arguments. Interestingly, I find that AI advocates are all but certain that they’ve stumbled upon the Golden Chalice that holds the blessings of future prosperity and advancement. They seem to believe that God Himself has written a new set of tablets with an LLM, and that any pushback against a future dominated by AI is nothing other than Luddite quackery. But I’ve learned that the Apostles of Technological Advancement and Progress have always believed that they’ve been formed of a finer clay than the rest of us, and that they are certain that their way is the way. I was recently given a talking to by someone who told me that my resistance to using AI will result in me failing to find future employment. They’re cheery folks, the AI True Believers.

But if the truth shall set you free, I feel compelled to explain, as comprehensively as I possibly can, why I believe that AI in its current civilian form poses a great and grave danger to our civilization.1 Of course, the arguments that follow are mine, as are any mistakes I might make. But much of my current thinking about AI has been shaped by several authors whose books and articles have left a serious impression upon my heart and soul, even when their works weren’t directly about AI. They include Anton Barba-Kay, Wendell Berry, Paul Kingsnorth, John Warner, Scott Newstok, and many others. I am forever in their debt.

We begin with some first principles.

First, by trade and disposition, I am a historian whose specific niche is long term strategic planning. I like to think that I have more than a basic sense of proficiency in that discipline. I like to think that I possess the basic tools needed to compare continuity vs change over time, to see problems not with presentist glasses, but with lenses that point towards the long arch of history. Today’s problems are rarely products of today alone, or even yesterday; they are often problems whose roots stem far into the past. The ability to think, as B.H. Liddell Hart wrote, with a mind three-thousand years old, is desperately needed in today’s day and age, where the news cycle and focus of attention changes by the minute. Today, we need slow, deliberate, long-term thinking more than ever.

Second, readers of Phil’s-Osophy know I recently wrote an essay about the nature of conservatism, where I argued that it is the job of the conservative to ensure and protect human flourishing. I think it is vital when considering any policy or cultural issue, whether or not a change in X policy or Y cultural value will better the ways of human flourishing. I don’t believe that there is any policy or cultural change worthy of minimizing the means of human flourishing. Of course, I’m likely to get pushback here, with people attacking me for what they believe is a subjective take on what human flourishing looks like. I say nay-nay. We do know the ways of human flourishing, and all of history attests to what propels human flourishing and what retards it. See that essay for more details.

Finally, I want to say something about the nature of the digital transformation writ large. I am about the last age group to remember a world before the advent of the internet, even if it was only for a little bit. I’m old enough to remember a world where after you either completed or pushed off your homework for the night, you went outside and had a baseball catch,2 played cops and robbers with your neighbors Shawn and Ryan, went for a bike ride about the park and (this one’s a throwback), walked around shopping malls with your crew for hours on end. I’m old enough to remember that when you had to write a research paper, you went to this building they called “the library.” I’m old enough to remember that there were people that possessed great wisdom and that you sought their help when you needed to navigate the world. We called those people dads and granddads and uncles and moms and grandmas and aunts and the next door neighbor and the farmer and the mechanic and the doctor and the teacher. I’m old enough to remember a world that wasn’t worried about everyone’s whereabouts 24/7, that if you, like I did, got off at the wrong bus stop one day, your mom didn’t call the cops to go searching for you, she just waited a little bit until you realized your mistake and walked back to where she was waiting for you. I’m old enough to remember not freaking out when someone didn’t respond to your call on the landline or when your birthday invitation arrived in someone else’s mailbox a day or so later than expected. I’m old enough to remember humans being human.

But all of that changed. That world died in the nuclear fallout of the digital age. And then, most egregiously, no one really questioned the fundamental overhaul of western society by the tech giants encroaching upon every part of everyday life. Kneeling before the God of Progress, we welcomed in a Brave New World. But I suspect that most people, if they are honest with themselves and away from their screens (for one struggles to be honest while in front of a screen), realize that we lost many good things when the 21st century came about. All the sociological evidence points to a decrease in overall happiness, especially in relationships, than was had in the past. We are all suffering from some acute anhedonia.3 We know that we thought better, rested better, made love better, played better, read better, laughed better, before our heads were taken from us by the machine. In other words, the digital transformation has fundamentally altered us as a species. As Anton Barba-Kay writes in his book A Web of Our Own Making (which is the greatest exploration of the nature of the digital transformation):

The appearance of digital technology marks the moment at which our tools or media are identified with our own conception of what is true, who we are, and what is good…Whereas all previous tools and media have had effects that gradually and indirectly acted on our self-understanding, digital technology acts straightforwardly on us; as attention is the single most intimate expression of who and what we are, digital technology is a spiritual technology. That is, it is a technology that increases our control of the world by increasing our control over ourselves. In doing so, it achieves an aspiration that has always been implicit in modern technology itself: the mastery of human nature. Digital technology is our first natural technology.

The digital transformation has not ushered in the utopia promised to us by the tech giants. It is my opinion that our world is categorically worse off by the standards of human flourishing as a result of the digital transformation. We should therefore resist any attempts to further the demise of our species by other digital technologies.4 Too much is at stake, and by that I mean the very meaning of what it means to be human.

All this being said, I want to address some of the most frequent arguments I hear in favor of using AI tools like LLMs.

Recently, a doctor I know told me that he uses AI to write letters to insurance companies to fight over insurance rejections that his patients have received. Another friend of mine, someone I know to be a talented writer, told me he will write something and then use AI to “fill in blanks for specific word choices.” In other words, he uses AI “as an editor to find the word choices that I like more.” He also uses AI to generate prompts for writing ideas.

A teacher in town explained that for kids who don’t know how to write she encourages AI, so that they can get “their thoughts down on paper” and then she can help them rewrite AI’s output in their own words. Another friend tells me that in his ABA business, he uses AI to write all of his emails on the basis of 1) he’s a bad writer and 2) it saves him time. Another friend uses AI to summarize articles he finds online but that he doesn’t have time to read. When AI summarizes articles, he can then read the summaries and decide which, if any, of the articles is worth his time. On and on the usages go.

I believe there is much wrong here.

AI Doesn’t Write

I want to make something abundantly clear. AI doesn’t write. ChatGPT doesn’t write, nor does Claude, nor do any of the AI LLM’s available on the market. All they do is merely generate syntax. Writing is a full body experience, a process of heart, soul, mind and hand. The feeling I have for the past 5 hours sitting at my desk working on this essay, that’s the process of writing. And the words that you are reading are a process of that fundamentally human mode of expression. ChatGPT doesn’t do that. It doesn’t write because it doesn’t think or feel as humans do. The AI slop that is generated by LLMs are a feature of its design, not a bug.

People get upset with me when I say that I’m a better writer than AI. They accuse me of being haughty. But I’d bet a lot of money that no output of an LLM ever sounded like this essay, and that’s because this essay is not average. All AI does is generate average syntax. That’s literally how it’s designed to work. AI doesn’t understand the tools of rhetoric, nor does it ever employ them, because it cannot write. I highly encourage everyone to read John Warner’s book about this topic for a deeper dive.

Most People Can’t Write

“But Phil, you are a gifted writer! Most of us are not!” is a retort I hear all the time. It’s comments like these that justify employees using AI, justify teachers being too lazy to teach others how to write so instead they can go on encouraging their students to use AI to “write,” justify the United States Senate in encouraging its thousands of staffers to use AI in all facets of the legislative affairs process.5

Contrary to what people think of me, I was born neither with a silver spoon in my mouth nor a quill in my hand. In fact, and I wish I could get a hold of him to present his case, my middle school English teacher, Mr. K, could testify to how much of a holy terror I was in his class. Golly did I hate English. I hated writing, I hated learning the rules of grammar, I hated literature, I hated all of it. I was a bad writer, and I think my multiple C papers from my freshman year of High School English could attest to that. But you know what I did? You know what people did for millennia? I learned how to write. My teachers taught me how to write. I would never have thought that I, a C English student, would be a professional speechwriter in the most powerful legislative body in the world. But I became one because I learned how to write. That’s what we always did, wasn’t it? We taught people how to write. We taught them the rules of grammar, the tools of rhetoric, exposed them to good writing and encouraged shitty first drafts until we molded ourselves and our students into writers. We did this because learning how to write is a literal superpower. No, not everyone became Dickens. But for thousands of years, we have been able to teach people how to write, myself included. We only forgot how to do that yesterday, apparently. That people somehow believe that writers of any talent were blessed by the Gods displays a lack of perspective on how we two legged creatures have been doing writing and writing instruction forever. For God’s sake, Shakespeare learned how to write! When people push back and think that writing cannot be taught, they not only betray an ignorance of how the world worked up until the present moment, but also demonstrate a particularly sad form of laziness. It is to this that we now turn.

Laziness and Efficiency

One of the strangest parts of the second Trump administration was Elon Musk’s efforts to remove waste and fraud throughout the federal government. As ideas go, I think this was a great one and I was and still am in favor of slashing a lot of the programs currently extant across the bureaucracy. But what was strange about Musk’s efforts was the name of his organization: The Department of Government Efficiency. I thought that peculiar. There are many things I want from my government. I want it to be noble and just. I want it to be strong. I want it to protect the common good and promote the general welfare. But I don’t think I ever would have asked for my government to be efficient. Has anyone ever thought that of government?

Our culture seems to make an idol of efficiency. Our culture wants us to do everything with an eye towards efficiency. We stopped building beautiful buildings because it’s more efficient to build ugly ones. It’s more efficient to chemically castrate ourselves with synthetic lights and fibers and foods, so we disregard anything natural, be it light or produce. Again, I am not saying that we should give up washing machines, for they are certainly more efficient than washing by hand. I am saying that efficiency ought not be the ultimate metric by which we navigate the world.

Here it’s worth quoting Wendell Berry:

The standard of efficiency displaces and destroys the standards of quality because, by definition, it cannot even consider them. Instead of asking a man what he can do well, it asks him what he can do fast and cheap. Instead of asking the farmer to practice the best husbandry, to be a good steward and trustee of his land and his art, it puts irresistible pressures on him to produce more and more food and fiber more and more cheaply, thereby destroying the health of the land, the best traditions of husbandry, and the farm population itself. And so when we examine the principle of efficiency as we now practice it, we see that it is not really efficient at all. As we use the word, efficiency means no such thing, or it means short-term or temporary efficiency, which is a contradiction in terms. It means cheapness at any price. It means hurrying to nowhere.

Where I think efficiency becomes particularly problematic is in how it affects the soul. If we are doing jobs, we ought to do them seriously. The doctor should be serious about his work; certainly we only want to visit serious doctors. And when doctors begin focusing on efficiency, even at the level of mindlessly asking AI to generate a letter to an insurance company, they, I propose, start to think a bit less intentionally about their work. They don’t have to fully be present in something as serious as the medical lives of their patients. And what starts as a certain laissez faire attitude towards letter writing might very well become a whole of care approach. We cannot make changes to one area of our life and pretend that that change won’t affect others. The thrill of having an AI do part of your job, even as mundane as letter writing, could very well seep into other areas. Why write a meaningful message to your daughter for her yearbook when you can have AI do it? Why think about a lifetime of marriage with your dying spouse when you can just ask AI to write a final goodbye poem? “Why should I struggle to teach people how to write when they can just become proficient in prompting an LLM?” says the teacher who first started using AI to generate report cards and lesson plans? Why do I actually have to do the teaching? Do we not have more important things to do?!

No, we don’t. We don’t have more important things to do. I say this not only because the Efficiency Evangelists are not using their free time to create beautiful art but are instead using the extra time to doom scroll AI slop on TikTok. No, I say this because life is not meant to be maximizing efficiency at the expense of our humanity. Never in human history was efficiency an ultimate value. Never before have people been so excited about not doing work. Never before have people been so bloody helpless and hopeless.

I think here of a poem by Joseph Fasano:

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper
by Joseph Fasano

Now I let it fall back

in the grasses.

I hear you. I know

this life is hard now.

I know your days are precious

on this earth.

But what are you trying

to be free of?

The living? The miraculous

task of it?

Love is for the ones who love the work.
------------

The arguments about AI and efficiency seem to relate to what Christine Rosen calls “The extinction of experience.” We are meant to experience life as fully as we can. Our world is already so disembodied, and we are all worse off as a result. So why should we allow ourselves to become more disembodied by using a machine to interact with other people with words that are not even our own? Using AI to be efficient with emails and letters and essays is to not only forfeit your own voice, but is to retreat from the world. I would have hoped it went without saying, but we should not do that.

Intellectual Freedom and Authenticity

Another problem with using AI in the manner described is that AI is not a neutral tool. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but it bears repeating. If you ask AI to summarize an article that praises Trump, it is unlikely that it will summarize the essay without bias (though it might summarize an essay trashing him more accurately). What people too often fail to realize is that these AI tools have value systems encoded within them, and that they may or may not be your value systems. But you should only interact with the world in accordance with your value system. There are countless examples of AI’s value systems at play and so I don’t need to rehash them here. But I can’t see why anyone would willingly forfeit their integrity to machines with their own value systems.

Moreover, I want to go back to the efficiency argument here again. It is a twisting of efficiency to have AI summarize articles for you. There is no way of knowing with any ounce of certainty whether or not the kernel of wisdom you might have received (needed?) from any given essay will be recounted in AI’s summary. Maybe the detail it deemed insufficiently important was precisely the detail you needed to read. Maybe the useless knowledge it discounted was decidedly useful. You’d never know if you surrendered your intellectual life to the machine.

I also struggle to see why a person should taint (poison? defame? violate? spoil?) his own writing by having AI “fill in the gaps” or find “better” words. Just do the hard work yourself, dammit. I don’t see why we should be excited about the prospect of giving over our minds, integrity and intellect to machines.

And here, as I reach the end (God bless those of you who read this to the end and didn’t ask AI to summarize it), I make my final and most important point.

As has been clear throughout, Wendell Berry has left a great impact on my thinking about technology and living life well and full. In a 1985 essay, Berry decried the millions of rural people who had been displaced and sent to live in the cities as their farmland was being ruined by big government and business. As a result of the influx of farmers who could not find work in the cities, there arose a new class of people called the “permanently unemployable.” It is a painful essay to read, and it ends with Berry asking a question that, whenever I’ve asked it to others, leaves people dazed and confused:

The great question that hovers over this issue, one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what people are for. Is their greatest dignity in unemployment? Is the obsolescence of human being now our social goal? One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization. In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, why should there be any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions.

That, perhaps, is the only question that really matters: what are people for? Are we on this earth to maximize efficiency with as little human interaction as possible? Are people supposed to be starved of the natural world and land? Are we supposed to surrender our minds to the machine? Shall we put in as minimal hard work into our lives as possible? Or are we meant to sweat and grunt under a weary life because that is how we remain truly alive and fully human?

Ultimately, my thoughts on AI boil down to answering Berry’s question. I do not think people are for living the type of life promised to us by the AI True Believers, lives where basic human flourishing is upended by the machine, where life, at a gilded level, has no friction, where your whims and fancies can be answered in seconds by a machine that doesn’t care about you. No, people are for living life to the fullest extent of their humanity, in all its messy, inefficient glory. People are for doing the hard work that makes life worth living. People are for embodied connection with one another and with God.

I hope we all might realize that before it’s too late.

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I had thought that in the aftermath of 10/7, we would do everything we could to protect the sanctity of Shabbat and the holidays from being overcome by news around the world. Knowing that bad news can totally ruin a person’s day—and it did for us on 10/7—we might make a valiant effort to say that we are going to protect our hearts and minds from breaking news on our holy days.

Alas, I was wrong.

Since 10/7, people seem all too eager to not only find out the news that is going on on Shabbat, but then share it with people in synagogue, including with me.

So let me be precise and specific: please stop telling me the news.

A few weeks ago, when the United States and Israel first starting bombing targets in Iran, I could hardly walk two feet in synagogue without someone asking me 1) if I had heard the news and 2) what I was doing in synagogue, as opposed to being in the situation room. First, I had not heard the news. How would I have done so? Contrary to popular imagination, I do not have my phone or any other devices on on Shabbat. Second, yes, I was not in the situation room. Those who made that joke clearly have a different understanding of what senate speechwriters do, but I’ll deal with that another day. The point is this: I did not need to hear that news on Shabbat. There was nothing for me to do with it, nothing for me to act upon, and it’s only a distracting thought from the sanctity of Shabbat. I came to pray, not have my mind swirling with ideas about air power and strategic bombing.

Over the weekend, people said to me that a pilot was shot down over Iran, his condition and whereabouts unknown. An awful tragedy whose ending we now know turned out as good as one can hope for. But why even share this news with me in synagogue? What was I supposed to do with it? What are any of us supposed to do with this type of news? Just please, stop telling me the news.

The consumption of news is a malady in modern society. We think that following the news is about “being informed” and “keeping up to date,” but I don’t think that’s really true. Given the vapid and transient nature of the modern news cycle, the news hardly informs us accurately and almost never without bias. No, I think most people have a sort of voyeuristic pleasure in following the news. They like to give off an air of being informed, of being able to “hock” about the latest news and then form an opinion that would take the real experts days to consider. And especially on Shabbat, when most other people have not read or watched any news, you get to feel like you have some inside baseball, some secret knowledge that you can divulge with great pleasure. But if it’s “cool” to know that an American airman was shot down or that your own country is now at war with a mortal enemy, perhaps some soul-searching is in order.

Our minds are sacred temples; we should be highly selective of what we put in there. And I try very hard—and I encourage you to as well—to protect it from needless troubles. And news, especially news that has no bearing to me in any real, significant and tangible way, is needless to my mind. If you want to consume it on your own terms, that’s your prerogative. But let me just suggest that we try mightily to prevent outside news of no real significance from interrupting our holy day in synagogue. I think we’d all be better for it.

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I didn’t post my books from February and I’d like to explain why.

First, to alleviate people’s concerns, I did read in February. I finished a second reading of Leon Kass’ incredible book on Exodus (which I started in January) and read most of a John McGahren novel before I realized I hated it and didn’t finish it. I also reread a bunch of Joseph Epstein’s essays, which always make me smile.

My lack of posting on my status was not because I was embarrassed that I didn’t read a lot. I’ve posted pics of my desk void of any books in the past. I didn’t post anything because the past month in particular made me realize that I’m in need of a new relationship with reading and writing.

As many readers of this Substack probably know, I started a job at the end of 2025 in the Senate as a speechwriter. I love the gig and I’m really honored to be here. All day long I read and write, which are two things I like to think I have some talent in. And now, after 4 months on the job, I’ve come to appreciate that it’s hard to read and write when all you do is read and write. W.H. Auden once described how a poet should make a living. He had this to say: “Ideally, he should have a job which does not in any way involve the manipulation of words.” I now completely understand that advice.

I spend my day reading news and memos and bills in order to write speeches. And then I spend hours over days and weeks writing prose in someone else’s voice that makes an impact. In other words, my day job uses the muscles I’ve spent decades growing, especially the muscles for close reading and rhetorical writing.

What that translates into is a sort of mental atrophy by the time I come home. After spending the entire day with my brain turned on, it’s hard to keep it on, even if it’s to do something I want to do. What I want to do is engage in close reading with fiction, poetry or history, or write some moving essay I think might win me a Pulitzer someday. But when business and pleasure look so similar, when they literally use the same muscles, it’s hard to participate in pleasure.

I’m reliably told from other speechwriters that what I’m experiencing is not abnormal. Everyone I’ve spoken to has had different bits of advice. The general theme that has emerged is that I should read lighter works of fiction instead of the heavy tomes I wish to conquer. Perhaps P.G Woodhouse, for instance. Others have suggested spending more time watching great films, a more passive but still creative endeavor. I like both ideas.

In short, I need to rejigger and change my approach to my creative reading and writing for the time being. I don’t know what that will look like, but I’ll be sure to share my journey here.

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One area where I have been particularly sensitive to the lack of human interaction is when it comes to stores and other retail spaces. Nothing is more depressing than self-checkout machines, which have grown like a cancer seemingly overnight in the US. First, I always wonder if I should also start stocking the shelves or arranging the shopping carts. Why am I doing your job? Where is my employee of the month photo? But more than that, self-checkout machines remove the ability to interact with another person. I’m still old enough to remember having no other option than to visit a real life cashier, where you’d make some small talk, banter about the weather, and leave with a smile. But that was taken away from us. Instead, a giant screen (and they are everywhere) with a camera recording me tells me how much my bananas are and then freaks out when I don’t put them in my bagging area within a femtosecond. Progress? Hardly.

Amazon.com, for all its benefits (and I think there are many) is the epitome of the disembodied experience. You never have to interact with another real life person in the flesh to get your product. You click and voila, it arrives at your door. Perhaps if you have a doorbell camera you can see that a real life person had to drive the package to you. But otherwise? Gone is the experience of another person when you purchase anything on Amazon. Something real is lost when human interaction is taken away from commerce. Take a look at this short video from Kyle Nutt.

Contrast the experience of online shopping and self-checkout machines with my new best friend, Justin. Justin is the owner of a local liquor shop, Allview Liquors, just outside Baltimore. I heard about his shop because it made a brief appearance on a Bourbon hunt from the YouTube Channel Brewzle. Wanting to learn how to unwind and enjoy some of my whiskey collection, I stopped by his shop earlier this month, hoping to meet Justin.

Walking into the small building I was immediately impressed by just how full the store was with bottles of whiskey and gin and tequila and beer. It was easy to tell that this store was a passion project, not just a mere business.

Sure enough, I spotted Justin, having recognized him from Brewzle’s video. I asked for some advice about a new bottle and before I knew it, Justin and I were deep in conversation, sharing our interest and love of good whiskey and tequila. I was taken aback not only by his knowledge and passion, but by just how much time he spent with me. After allowing me to sample some of his store picks, we exchanged numbers and I left with a tasty bottle of his store pick of Wilderness Trail, and vowed to be his loyal customer.

It goes without saying that I recently came back to his store. Justin and I were in touch in the interim weeks, where he gladly fielded some questions about bottles I was curious about. And I dropped a line to him that there was a particularly rare bottle of tequila that I was interested in. “I’ve got a bottle for you when you come in next,” he said. I really couldn’t believe it. But there it was, in my hands when I came in next.

I mention this story not because I’m here to talk about my new interest in tequila. No, the best part of the story is how human it all was. Take away the people in this story and it becomes stale and bland and lifeless. If I had had that bottle of tequila shipped to my house after I bought it online (in an auction, let’s say), nothing about that story would be meaningful. But my interaction with Justin is meaningful because there is a relationship at its core. It was that relationship, still in its infancy, that helped bring about a mutually beneficial exchange. That is the celebratory part of this story. Real life relationships are beautiful things that can achieve beautiful things. I feel good after every interaction I have with him, as I know all his loyal customers do.

The same is true about my car mechanics. Though I live in Baltimore, I still visit my local mechanics in Philly for routine car maintenance. Why wouldn’t I? Nick and Terry have been in my life since I’ve been a little kid. I’ve watched as Terry’s son started working for his dad, gaining more and more responsibility and independence in the shop. When my grandfather was in the trade, he’d work closely with them both and their bond is still a joy to witness (my grandfather regularly stops by just to say hello and maybe grab a bottle of antifreeze for his truck). They know my entire family, as I know some of theirs. The relationship I have with Nick and Terry—the Z Brothers, as their business is called—is worth much more than gas spent on the drive to Philly to get my oil changed. I wouldn’t trade that relationship for anything sold to me under the guise of “convenience.”

Human connection, which we are so desperate for these days, is all about having a part of someone else. When you are “connected” to someone on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, you are not really connected. You do not possess your friend in the way you would in person or with something physical. Christine Rosen in her excellent book The Extinction of Experience writes about how one of the most jarring changes of the 21st century has been how we treat celebrities. When I was growing up, you stood outside an arena or theater and hoped to get someone’s autograph. Now we only want a selfie. This is a profound change. When you have someone’s autograph, you have a piece of them. You have something intimate, personal, tangible. A selfie? Eh. It’s not personal in the same way at all. It’s fleeting and two dimensional.

That’s why I think that the next best thing to seeing a friend in person is to write them letters. I think it’s even better than video calling. Sure, you get to see your friend on a video call, though the experience is changed and dampened by its virtual nature. But when you have a physical letter from your friend, you have a part of them. You see their handwriting, you see the mistakes they made, you see how personal it was to you. The lost art of letter writing is such an easy way to keep alive the dwindling flame of human connection. I suggest you try it. In fact, you can start by sending me one.

My new year’s resolution this year is to take my life at a much more slower, intentional pace. I’m tired of always feeling that I’m running to the next thing, chasing, hunting, searching for something (it goes without saying that the hunt for the next thing makes me tired). The slower lifestyle is what so captivated me on my trip to Europe last summer, and it is that approach to life I so desperately crave. And it seems to me that one of the surest ways to slow down life is to fight for real human connection as much as you can. It’s to fight for those nights laughing with your friends into the wee hours of the morning, to fight for the night sipping fine whiskey with your mates and telling stories. It is to spend time enjoying the time spent with the cashier or the barman, doing nothing other than being human in its fullest expression. We need more of that. I know I do. And it’s that I hope to achieve this year.

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But contemporary American politics is anything but exciting. It’s certainly lost so much of its interest and intrigue, not least of which is because it’s all so damn predictable.

The ICE shooting in Minneapolis is a tragic but perfect example of how predictable American politics has become. Before anyone with any integrity could have assessed all the evidence, the overwhelming majority of the nation made up their mind. The modern Sanhedrin that is Twitter issued their rulings. If you were in favor of the ICE operations, you thought the shooting a justified act of self-defense. If you were against them, then the shooting was just another murder for you to watch on Twitter. Who could have guessed that that’s what America would decide besides for everyone?

There’s more, too. It wasn’t merely the expected dichotomy that was so distressing; it was seeing how people could so wildly interpret the same exact video to suit their needs. The videos of the shooting weren’t simply up for interpretation. With your conclusion already in mind, you watched the video and did whatever mental gymnastics you deemed necessary to bolster your conclusion. Having already passed judgement, you went in search of the evidence. When Polonius said “to thine own self be true,” he did not mean that you should always and immediately affirm the beliefs you think are right.

Yes, people have biases, myself obviously included. But we should try much harder than we do now (which should be easy since we as a culture don’t try at all) to overcome them. Dispassionate analysis is the only way to truth. It is hard, but not impossible. And it is deeply rewarding.

While I’m here, allow me to share a few more thoughts about the shooting.

After reviewing all the footage available, it seems to me that the officer can rightly be seen as having acted in self defense. With only a split second to make a decision on force, the officer, I believe, rightly and reasonably thought his life was in danger, drew his weapon and fired. As a CCW holder, I imagined myself in his shoes.

Of course all of that happened in the blink of an eye, a critical part of the story you wouldn’t know if you were watching Twitter’s overnight experts on the use of force pause, rewind, slow down and crop the multiple videos of the shooting. It is horrendously dishonest to judge any use of force in this way. The officer wasn’t able to pause life. He wasn’t able to see if the tires were skidding on the frozen road. So, with all the information his brain had to process in so quick a time, did he make a justified, reasonable choice? I think so. You may disagree, and that’s totally fine, but at least accept this very consequential detail.

Which leads me to my next point. Even if you think, as I do, that the shooting was justified, someone was still killed. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention this point online in any meaningful way. Even justified shootings—frankly, all justified uses of force—have an element of tragedy within them; people still die.

In fact, there is a double tragedy here. It is a tragedy that a human being was killed, and it is a tragedy that the woman driving the car acted in a way that made killing her justified. To quote a friend and mentor, “we need to be a ‘two fucks people’.”1

Finally, I want to return to something that I wrote about after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. For days, social media was awash with the multiple videos of the shooting, once again broadcasting a killing for all to see online.

Once again, I found myself asking why I was bothering with it all. That it was a tragedy is no question. That it had the potential to cause unrest in Minneapolis I also had no doubt. But why did I, Phillip Dolitsky, need to see these videos and track this story? What meaningful difference did it make in my life? To quote Joey Diaz, did I not have to go to work in the morning? Is my life really different or on the verge of changing by dint of this shooting? An honest assessment yields a blistering, emphatic “no.”

But in our globalized, digital, disembodied world, everything in front of your nose on your screen matters to you. Everything competes for your headspace and attention, even things that are simply of no consequence to you and your life. Yes, if you follow and comment on all of the hot button issues in the world today, I guess you can grow your Twitter page and argue with anonymous people on the internet. But ultimately, why invest time and energy to things so distant from your life? Why, especially when it’s of no consequence, should you expose yourself to killings online? I eagerly await good reasons for either.

I am not saying that you should not be concerned with the world. In fact, I’m saying you should be concerned with the world but only as it affects you. Most of what happens in the world is of no consequence to your wellbeing, livelihood, friends and family. It is my suggestion that you limit your exposure to those things which have no real impact on your life. Our minds are not made to follow every bit of news or track every bit of outrage. Don’t do it.

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So far, the experiment has worked out very well. I either spend my train rides reading, dozing off, or watching the world outside my window. I also spend some time people watching. What I’ve seen has been downright depressing.

And perhaps downright is the right word here, because everyone on the train is on their phone looking down. Everyone holds their phone in their lap and looks down at it. I can’t recall seeing anyone on the train look up from their phone other than to roll a crick out of their neck from their prolonged session of looking down at an artificially bright screen 6 inches from their nose.

Once I noticed this on the train, I started noticing it everywhere. Everyone is just looking down all the time, most often at their phone. No one looks up to smell the roses. I can’t imagine that anyone on my train ride from Baltimore to DC could identify any of the train stops outside the window, because no one bothers to look up. It’s wickedly dystopian. The world’s most extreme prisons always bind their inmates in such a way so that they cannot look up. To be constantly looking down is to partake in a punishment reserved for the worst people on the planet.

Being in a perpetual state of looking down undoubtedly makes a person feel down. We are very in tune with our bodies, and so constantly craning downward will make you feel down. It’s no wonder that a general sadness has descended (or perhaps ascended from our phones) onto the general population. Everyone looks so down all the time because everyone looks down all the time.

After spending some time noticing just how down everyone looks, I shared on my WhatsApp status the thought that if, say, Synagogues were built in more classical styles of architecture, perhaps we would pray better. That thought, though it’s been brewing for some time, came after a session of people watching in the Capitol Rotunda. I’m now privileged to work in one of the most beautiful buildings in the entire world. You know what people do when they come to the Capitol? They look up. Whenever I’ve seen tours come into the famed Rotunda, all of the visitors have their heads thrown back, glancing as high up as they can. Beauty exists in this world; it’s almost never below you. You have to look up to see it. Good architecture—which is to say, classical architecture—is so magnificent because it draws the eyes upwards. It reminds you that there is something Above you, something bigger than yourself. If only you’d just look up to see it.

I mentioned in my end of year book recap video that I also spent time watching some great films this year, especially Alain Delon films. My favorite of his that I watched this year, Plein Soleil, is the French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Aside from being a perfect movie, I was struck by the sensation of watching a film that was made before the advent of the internet and digital media. In none of the scenes do you ever catch any of the characters and extras looking down. No one sat outside in a cafe and looked down. You admired the world around you by looking up at it. In one of his most iconic appearances on camera, the famed “Market Walk” in Plein Soleil that cemented his status as a film icon, all Alain Delon does is walk about the market and admire its goods. But also notice everyone else in the scene; they’re doing the same. This is what life used to look like before the tech overlords sent our heads looking downward. Just imagine what that scene would look like if it was filmed today.

So much of modern life is unnatural. We spend the day looking at artificial light instead of natural light, breathing recycled air instead of the real stuff, looking down into a glowing box rather than up at a shining world. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. And one of the things they did differently there was live in the world, not merely exist alongside it, chasing the ephemeral, the vapid, the unnatural like we do today, facilitated by the tech giants who care not for our humanity. For all our advances in human society, we have regressed when it comes to human flourishing. Can we fully separate ourselves from The Machine? Unlikely. But any small rebellion counts. So if you’re looking for a New Year’s Resolution, perhaps take this one:

Look up more often. The world is a beautiful place if you do.

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Everything in modern life—especially modern American life—has become politicized. Everything is filtered through the lens of politics, which too often is zero-sum. So too has the discussion of what conservatism means. To listen to the debate about the future of conservatism is to understand that conservatism is nothing more than a way of organizing political systems of governance and the advocacy of certain types of laws over other types. Conservatives, in this line of thinking, are people most likely to believe in small, limited government, want lower taxes and have a strong belief in nationalism.

But conservatism has never merely been a way of organizing political life; it has never meant just that. Thinking otherwise ignores the fundamental truth in conservatism which is that the conservative temperament exists to ensure and protect human flourishing.

When you read the giants of conservative thought—TS Eliot and Burke, to name just two—you see that they concerned themselves with the entirety of the human person. Politics alone cannot account for human flourishing, and all of human history attests to that fact. We need much more than political life in order to thrive. Conservatism, Sir Roger noted, “is the belief in sacred things and the desire to defend them against desecration.” Conservatism “tells us that we have collectively inherited good things that we must strive to keep.” And those good things are more than just political governance.

The conservative temperament (or sensibility in George Will’s formulation) will defend literature and poetry, architecture and aesthetic beauty, because those things are necessary for human flourishing. It will inspire a love of the local home, for it is there that we learn how to live. It will give grave import to the habit of obedience, a belief in the old authorities and a sense of the sacred. It will also defend high culture against its kitsch and cant substitutes. Political life may help enable any of those things. It also may not. Some of the most important and beautiful works of art were made under anything but conservative regimes. But the conservative seeks the things that slip through the surly bonds of earth to touch the soul. That is why, in William Buckley’s formulation, the job of the conservative is “to stand athwart history yelling Stop,” because it hasn’t always been the case that the progress of history necessarily ensures and protects human flourishing.

Conservatives must have a ready answer to the question of what they hope to conserve. The answer, it seems to me, cannot only be a particular set of political ideals.

If conservatives cannot answer what they hope to conserve beyond some version of petty politics, the entire project collapses into a nasty and brutish contest for administrative power. And when that happens, something essential slips away. The deeper work of conservatism begins long before the drafting of laws. It begins in the affections, in the slow recognition that life is made meaningful by things that grew before us and will, God willing, outlast us.

A conservatism attentive to the full person will look first to these settled goods. It will guard them not out of fear of change but out of love for the fragile order that allows ordinary people to live decent, dignified lives.

That is the conservatism I believe in; it is absolutely worth defending.

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I’m honestly not sure how I stumbled upon this very short novel (it’s more of a novella, truth be told). The edition I have is published by NYRB, a publishing house I truly love. I must have simply been browsing the catalogue when the title caught my eye. I’m glad I followed my gut; what followed was one of the most pleasurable and serene reading experiences of my entire life.

The novel follows Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, who arrives into the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Tom is deeply suffering from his time in the war; he is a survivor of the Battle of Passchendaele, one of the most gruesome campaigns of WWI. In addition to the mark left on his soul, the war has left Tom with a nervous twitch on his face and a bad stammer. Tom too is in desperate need of restoration.

Upon arriving to Oxgodby, Tom meets a motley crew of characters—the parish priest, Rev. J.G. Keach, who is not all that keen on having Tom in town; the Ellerbeck family, whose two young children cling to Tom; and Charles Moon, a fellow veteran of the Great War. Charles is in Oxgodby on an archaeological mission, to dig up the remains of someone’s ancestor who used to live there. Very quickly, Charles and Tom become close friends, bound together by their suffering in the war and their shared need to heal.

There are a few things about the novel that really struck me. First, and it’s impossible to capture this into words, was just how serene the novel made me feel. I was able to read the novel in one sitting (it’s only 130 pages) and I physically felt tranquil and calm throughout. Carr has this genius ability to not only paint the idyllic landscape of Oxgodby in such a vivid manner, but somehow manages to inspire that tranquility within the reader. Reading A Month in the Country was a peaceful experience for me, just as much as his time in the country was for Tom.

Second, and related, was just how healing the storyline really is. There are some moments in the story where things don’t go as planned in Oxgodby, and Tom fumbles the bag at certain points. But it’s not lost on the reader from the start that as Tom restores this medieval painting to life, he is also restoring himself back to life. One gets a different version of Tom by the end of the novel. In perhaps the most memorable line in the novel, Tom remarks:

The marvelous thing was coming into this haven of calm water and, for a season, not having to worry my head with anything but uncovering their wall-painting for them. And, afterwards, perhaps I could make a new start, forget what the War and the rows with Vinny had done to me and begin where I’d left off. This is what I need, I thought— a new start and, afterwards, maybe I won’t be a casualty anymore.

“Maybe I won’t be a casualty anymore.” I wept reading that line.

It’s striking that the novel takes place inside a church, with Tom laboring over a mural of the Judgment, but the healing he experiences does not really come through religion. The church is the vessel for his healing, but it’s art itself that restores him. The act of uncovering this long-buried painting—layer after layer of dust, lime and centuries—becomes the very act by which Tom begins to uncover and resurrect his own broken spirit. As the painting emerges, his twitch and stammer fade away. Carr is careful not to make this too heavy-handed; the metaphor is there, but it emerges gently, in rhythm with Tom’s brushstrokes. It is art, not creed, that makes him whole again. In this regard, I felt a deep and profound kinship with Tom. Lately, I’ve been more readily finding God in verse, in architecture, in music and in nature rather than in the sanctuary. The novel gave me a sense of permission in that regard. It suggested that the divine can still reach us, but sometimes it does so through a painted wall or a walk in the fields rather than a sermon.

Another part of the novel that stayed with me was Tom’s friendship with Charles Moon. Their bond is quiet, unshowy, but it runs deep. Both men had endured the war, both carried scars they could never quite put into words. What makes their friendship so special is just how ordinary it is; what they want is to merely bask in each other’s company. They share meals, trade the kind of half-formed thoughts only true friends can accept without judgment and sit together in silence that isn’t awkward but companionable. It’s the kind of friendship forged out of a shared recognition: you too have suffered, you too have seen. There’s something profound in that kind of companionship, a reminder that friendship at its best is about the sheer relief of being understood without needing to explain yourself. A part of me healed reading about their friendship.

What lingered with me most after closing the book was the sense that life, even after ruin, can be pieced back together in small, almost imperceptible ways. A brush lifted to a wall. A meal, beer or smoke shared between friends. A silence that does not need to be filled. These moments of sacred healing come to us quietly, but we must be ready for them. As Tom himself says, “we must snatch at happiness as it flies.”

A Month in the Country is a novel about restoration, but more than that, it’s a novel about gentleness in a world that rarely allows it. And perhaps that’s why it feels so necessary now, why I related to it in such a profound way. We may not be able to undo the chaos that shapes us, but we can find our way back to wholeness, even if only for a season, in the steady consolations of art and friendship.

By the final page, you believe Tom when he hopes he “won’t be a casualty anymore,” because by then, you’ve felt some of that restoration yourself.

I know I did.

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On my first day in London, wandering about the streets of Westminster, I couldn’t help but notice that across the street from my hotel was a pub called The Old Star. Standing outside on the sidewalk were a group of people, all around my age, hanging out and drinking a pint of (inevitably warm) beer. Not sitting, but standing, as is customary in British pub culture. After about an hour, when I had made my rounds through Piccadilly and St. James’s Park, I returned to my hotel, and passed the same group of people standing outside, still enjoying each other’s company, another round of beer just recently distributed to them all. It was a wonderful sight.

In the town of Bayeux, France, where we spent the bulk of our time, the café culture was alive and vibrant. It was inspiring. Walking about the town, I’d find myself popping down one street after another only to see another café with people sitting outside, having a coffee or beer or gin, a smoke and some food, all while enjoying the company of their friends and family. For hours on end, the streets of Bayeux were filled with locals and tourists visiting the cafés, doing nothing more than enjoying themselves in one of the most human ways we know how.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was when, one night in France, myself and the other members of the newly established Quad went to a local café for dinner. It’s hard to describe just how picturesque this night was. The sky a deep blue color, the temperature perfect, the vibes, as the cool kids say, were up. Seated at the café, outside of course, we spent the night sipping G&Ts and sharing stories with one another. We had a grand ol’ time. And here’s the amazing thing: no one took our their phones. Why distract yourself with the fake stuff when the real thing is sitting right in front of you? Frankly, during my 9 days in Europe, I cannot recall seeing anyone take out their phone sitting in a café. What a great night that was.

It was much the same in Munich. One of the highlights of my time in Munich, which I alluded to in my first reflection, was Saturday night. Beer is the drink of choice in Munich, Augustiner bier in particular. Within literal spitting distance from our hotel, there were probably 4 or 5 bierhalles. After Shabbat was over, I was standing on the street corner outside our hotel, across the street from the Haxnbauer, when I saw a group of young guys, probably a bit buzzed, hanging out outside, arms slung over one another in marvelous camaraderie and friendship, drinking and enjoying themselves. The next morning, when I had my morning cup of coffee, I asked the barista, a local named Daniel, about nightlife in Munich. “Do you guys not have clubs?” I asked. “Clubs?” he responded, a bit puzzled. “Why would we go to clubs; we have friends. We go hang out with friends at the bierhalle.” Now that’s a line that will stop you dead in your tracks.

I’m not here going to argue that Europe is better than America because of its café culture; the two are simply different, as the travel writer Chris Arnade recently wrote about. But I will say that I do think that there is a moral superiority to at least this aspect of European life that we should pause to consider.

What struck me most about my time experiencing some of Europe’s cafes and bierhalles was just how relaxed it all was. There was a particular lack of urgency, specifically that nefarious type of urgency which is pointless. We in the US are used to a hustle culture, that is continually looking to “optimize” both shareholder value and our own lives. And for that we are the richer country. But Europe is both healthier and happier. Let’s pause and consider that for a moment. Europeans drink and smoke much more than Americans do. There isn’t the same “gym-bro” culture there, where people unironically post nearly nude pics of themselves at the gym for all to see, nor are there regular TikToks with “come run a 5k with me at 3:00AM” captions. So how does that work? How does the seemingly more “degenerate” culture actually come to be healthier than ours? It seems to me that there are two answers.

The first is that we in America are killing ourselves to stay healthy. Not in some metaphorical, abstract sense, but quite literally grinding ourselves into a state of anxious exhaustion in the name of wellness. Everything is tracked, optimized, hacked. We’ve turned health into a second job, and like most jobs in America, it never really ends. It’s not enough to be in decent shape; you have to broadcast that shape, preferably in a mirror selfie captioned “no days off.” Wellness becomes a spectacle, a brand. You're not just running to clear your head; you're running to beat your last time, while your fitness app tells you how heroic you are. You can’t simply enjoy a bike ride, it needs to be tracked and measured against all your friends on Strava. Oh the shame of not being as fast as last time! All of it carries the unmistakable scent of self-flagellation with a ring light. And yet somehow, despite the smoothies and magnesium supplements and color-coded gym routines and fitness influencers and self-help books and inspirational podcasts set to dramatic music and clips of David Goggins and, of course, the algorithm, we seem to be getting sicker and sadder.

In Europe, it just didn’t look that bloody hard. People drink and smoke more, yes. They still have cigarette vending machines there. But Europeans also walk everywhere. They eat full meals, slowly. Their food is pure and fresh, made with ingredients that you can pronounce. They sit in the sun and talk for hours. There’s no panic around food, no obsession with muscle definition. They didn’t look like they were working to stay healthy—they just looked like they weren’t working so hard to feel human. And that seems to be a much more stable foundation to build a healthy and happy life on.

The second reason, and maybe the more important one, is that they have friends. Real life friends that they see often in the confines of a third space. Social scientists have been saying for years now that the strongest predictor of health and longevity isn’t exercise or even quitting smoking—it’s close relationships. How many people you can call when something good happens. How many people would notice if you disappeared for a while. The presence of real, consistent, face-to-face connection. And Europe, for all its flaws, seems to have held onto that.

It was everywhere. Old friends playing cards in the afternoon. Couples having the kind of quiet, easy dinners that only come after decades together. Young people sitting on curbs outside bars, laughing at something no one else will ever find funny. It all looked so simple. Not therapeutic, not curated, not "intentional community." Just... life, lived to the fullest.

I keep thinking about those guys in Munich, arms slung around each other, drinking the night away, awash in laughter. It was almost as if their presence on that street corner belonged there. As if it was a staple of the Munich architecture. And then Daniel the barista, asking with total sincerity, “Why would we go to clubs? We have friends.” That line hasn’t really left me because it’s so plainly true. It made me wonder how many of us—myself included—have forgotten that friendship can be the thing itself, not just something that happens on the way to something else. Pure friendship, for its own sake. I believe it was CS Lewis who wrote that “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” Amen to that.

But there’s something else in Daniel’s line too: a quiet little rebuke. Why are you always trying to go somewhere else? Who told you that being with your people wasn’t enough? Why do you need to lose yourself to external stimuli to enjoy yourself? Why can’t you just be, surrounded by people you love and who love you back? Why do we insist on dressing joy up in spectacle, in noise, in novelty, when all it ever asked for was a table, a drink, and a few familiar faces?

These days, I can’t escape the feeling that in our world, even joy feels transactional. Time with friends becomes “catching up.” Even our rest must be productive. We say things like “let’s get something on the books” and “sometime soon” and then bury ourselves in the crap that’s held a few inches from our nose in a brightly lit screen. But those guys in Munich weren’t “catching up.” They were living. Fully, freely, unselfconsciously.

So maybe the question isn’t how to add more joy to our lives. Maybe it’s how to remove the things that keep us from seeing it. Maybe joy’s already there, waiting on the street corner, leaning on a friend’s shoulder, telling a story for the third time, just because. Pour the second drink. Tell the same jokes again. Be there, fully, not because it’s efficient or scheduled, but because the soul craves it.

So here’s my open invitation: linger. Sit a little longer. Let the evening stretch and revel in the moon’s glow. Reclaim the useless hour, the unstructured night, the conversation that wanders nowhere in particular. Life will try to speed you up. Let your friends slow you down. Work extra hard to carve out meaningful time with them. Because in the end, it won’t be the miles you ran or the meetings you nailed that echo in your mind. It’ll be the laughter spilling out onto the sidewalk, the drink passed across the table, the night that didn’t need a reason to be beautiful, but was nothing short of sublime.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
— Sonnet 30

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I didn’t take cell phone service to Europe. Now, to be fair, this started off as a bit of logistical necessity with my cell phone provider; it’s a long story. Nevertheless, once I realized that taking cell phone service with me would be a serious hassle, I embraced the possibility of a digital detox and the chance to be totally disconnected from the world, knowing that I could rely on hotel WiFi throughout the trip when we returned at the end of each day.

I am here to report that I lived to tell the tale. Consider these thoughts “dispatches from a modern day Flâneur.”

Though I have only been on this side of heaven for 27 years, I’m reliably told that us humans have been wandering the Earth for millennia. And wouldn’t you know it, for the overwhelming majority of civilization, we navigated the world without a cell phone in our pockets. And despite the technology overlords encroaching on all aspects of daily living, one can still navigate large swaths of the world without a smartphone. Here’s how I did it.

The first challenge I would have to overcome would be getting from London’s Heathrow airport to my hotel in central London. To be fair, this was hardly a challenge. All I did was print out from Google Maps the directions I’d need to follow: Take the Piccadilly line toward Cockfosters, and get off at Barons Court. Once there, hop on the Green line toward Upminster and get off at St. James’s Park. Voila, I arrived at my hotel, safe and sound, without using a smartphone.

After checking into the hotel, I decided I’d explore central London with my camera, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to use it the next day during Shabbat. I popped down to the front desk and asked the concierge if they had a map of the area. They did! After reviewing the map for a few minutes, a skill my great-uncle taught me when I was a very young boy, I headed out into the streets, armed with just my camera. It was lovely. I felt present, and was just happy to pop down any street that caught my eye. After snapping some pics of Big Ben and Churchill, I made my way through St. James’s Park and into Piccadilly, where I navigated to Hatchards Booksellers. There was something poetic about entering into a bookseller that has been around since the 18th century without a smartphone, armed only with a map. Maps, might I add, are truly wonderful things.

Throughout the trip, this is how I would navigate all the towns that we were in. In Bayeux, France, where we spent the bulk of our time, I would wander the streets at night, here without a map, knowing that as long as I could see the steeple of the Bayeux Cathedral, I’d find my hotel. These nights wandering Bayeux were some of the best. I allowed myself a child’s curiosity, walking down new streets every night, taking a right instead of a left, seeing different parts of the town spontaneously. And yes, there was one night that I got lost, in a town 5000 miles away from home, without a smartphone. Somehow, I lost track of the church steeple. Ok, maybe a beer or two was at play. Honestly, who cares? I know I didn’t. I didn’t panic, I wasn’t frantically reaching for the phantom phone that I wished was in my pocket. No, I just kept walking until I found a sign that pointed me in the right direction. All was well. The world did not actually end.

In the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, we were given a few hours to enjoy ourselves, have lunch and explore the gorgeous town’s many offerings. I ate my lunch in the town square, next to a statue of General Eisenhower, just enjoying the moment and being present. Our guide, Dr. DeToy, had mentioned that there was a delicious craft brewery in the town, and pointed “that way” when asked where it was. Challenge accepted. I began walking “that way,” looking for the brewery without even a map. And wouldn’t you know it, I eventually found it. A mix of luck, signs and a friendly interaction with a local ended with an ice cold pint in hand. Beer tastes better when you’ve worked for it.

Needless to say, my world did not end without having my smartphone on me 24/7. Quite to the contrary, refusing to take cell phone service enhanced my trip so much. I’m glad I had this experience.

Broadly speaking, there were three main takeaways I had from this digital detox.

First, every time I logged onto WiFi at the hotel, I was surprised with the notifications that came in: they were mostly crap. Without fail, I would look at the notifications and alerts that came in and say aloud “so this is what I missed today? Nothing of importance.” Sure, there were group chats that I only responded to hours later, and an email or two that could use some amount of my attention. But there was nothing urgent. There was nothing that demanded immediate attention. Never once did I say “I can’t believe I missed that!” This was a very humbling experience, and gave me a new perspective on the types of things we consume on our phones every day. If it’s true that you only recognize what you have when you no longer have it, I recognized that I need to cut out a lot of nefarious noise that pings my phone throughout the day.

Second, being disconnected in the manner that I was revealed a truth about the nature of (at least my) smartphone usage. If it’s true that compulsive smartphone usage is an addiction, I should have fallen into some sort of withdrawal. But I didn’t. There are probably a few reasons why that was the case, but I think the main reason is because of the expectation of connectivity. The nature of smartphones and our digital era is that we are all expected to be on call, expected to be able to respond to a friend’s text or an email right away. But life need not carry that expectation. If you are always expected to answer your phone, you prioritize someone else over yourself. I see no reason to do that. Once I told friends and family that I would not be able to respond to messages right away, and once my brain realized that my smartphone was nothing more than a glorified music player, the compulsion to use it vanished. This was a mind-blowing realization, and I’m going to implement more measures to ensure that I can keep the expectation of connectivity away. Otherwise, we serve the phone rather than it serve us.

Lastly, living without a smartphone in my pocket meant that I was actually interacting with the world. It meant that I had to trust myself. There would not be the crutch of a smartphone and Google to come to my rescue if things went awry. This itself was a delightful experience. We are a resilient species, something that we too often forget when the sum total of all human knowledge is in our pockets. But the world is a bright place, and we miss it if our heads are constantly craning downwards toward our smartphones. You can navigate the London Underground without a smartphone, you can go on a walk in a new town without the fear of falling into oblivion and you can interact with new people with nothing more than a nice smile. I highly suggest you try it.

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Two weeks ago I took off to London’s Heathrow airport as part of the Military History and Strategy Fellowship, a program offered through The Public Interest Fellowship. For the next 9 days, our group visited London, Normandy and Germany to see how the invasion of Normandy unfolded, as well as other WWII battle sites, monuments and memorials. It was an absolutely life changing experience, and I’d like to reflect on the trip here. This first reflection will be about the content and experience of the trip itself. In a second post, I’ll share some further reflections about how I engaged with the trip and European culture.

Our trip began in England, where after a walking tour of London, we visited the Churchill War Rooms. Walking down the steps into this makeshift bunker, one sees a large bomb suspended overhead. “Mind the bomb,” says our British guide. “Is that a replica bomb?” a friend asks. “No,” he says, “that was a real bomb that was found just outside the bunker. There are many such instances of bombs being found in construction sites all across Europe.” Now that’s how you start a tour.

The Churchill War Rooms are a historic underground complex in London that served as the British government's secret headquarters during World War II. It is where Churchill would sometimes escape to during bombing raids of London. It’s also where he would convene his cabinet, and where officers of the Royal Navy, British army and Royal Air Force would man the Map Room. In this room, which we had the privilege to enter, officers were responsible for producing a daily intelligence summary for the King, Prime Minister and the military Chiefs of Staff. They would then update the large maps plastered on the walls, pinning troop movements across the world.

Being in this underground complex was a humbling experience, on two very different levels. First, in the cabinet room, which is frozen in time from the last time it was planned for use during the war, one notices Churchill’s chair; it has scratch marks in the arms. The Great Commoner understood and felt the weight of responsibility he shouldered every day for 6 years. One feels the weight of the world being in that room. Second, the Map Room made me pause and reflect about technology. In the Map Room, one finds a row of telephones, color coded, that analysts would use to speak to military and other leaders about updates on the battlefield. It then hit me that this room used analogue means to wage a world war. There was no internet, no OSINT X account to track troop movements, no FlightRadar to monitor enemy and friendly air forces. And yet, these brave soldiers managed to track and manage a truly global conflict in near-real time. Think about that next time you doomscroll on your smartphone. I’ll have more to say about this in my second reflection piece, but for now, suffice it to say that I felt very small being there. Incredible things happened in that dimly lit underground compound.

But even the War Rooms paled in comparison to what would become for me one of the highlights of the trip: Southwick House. But first, some background.

For the better part of a year and a half, I’ve been working on a paper that I cannot seem to make any progress on. Its topic is the interplay between emotion and military strategy. What does the military strategist or battlefield commander do with his emotions? Where does he put them when he tries to craft military strategy? Knowing that any strategy puts troops and personnel at risk, what does one do with his emotions when thinking through strategic problems? This question was first prompted by my love and admiration for General Dwight Eisenhower. The invasion of D-Day would be Ike’s own brilliant, daring idea. He would be responsible for ordering its launch. Ike knew he was sending men to die. In fact, years after D-Day, he would be moved to tears just at the mention of it. How did he do it? For over a year, I could not come up with an answer.

Southwick House is the marvelous manor house that became the forward command post of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, led by General Eisenhower. Located not too far away from the ports that would launch the invasion, this is the house where one of the world’s most important decisions took place.

Entering a room in the house, one comes across the famous Map Room, where a massive map depicting the invasion is setup. In this room, Walter Cronkite would interview Ike years after the invasion, and the large map would serve as the backdrop. But in the room directly behind it, history changed. In that room, General Eisenhower, pacing up and down, contemplated whether the weather conditions would be ripe for the invasion on June 6th. Pacing up and down in the room that I was now standing in, knowing that he alone was going to order hundreds of thousands of young troops into enemy territory, Ike contemplated the decision: to go or not to go, that was the question. Believing that his meteorologists accurately showed a break in the weather on the 6th, Ike gave the world-altering order. Framed in the room is a weather report for the next available date that the invasion might have been executed, a few weeks later. The weather then would have been terrible for the invasion. Scribbled in the corner of the document reads: “Stagg— Thanks. I thank the gods of war we went when we did—D.E.” One need not wonder who D.E. is.

Standing in that room, my eyes started to well. I had realized the answer to my question. Out of a profound love for his country and with an unwavering belief in his troops, Ike ordered the invasion of Normandy to free Europe from the Nazi scourge. Ike loved his country and the free world. And it is only out of profound love that one can do what he did. One feels that torment and agony of the decision that was Ike’s to make; it is no wonder he smoked as much as he did. But we are eternally grateful that he made the right decision. I once again felt so, so small, and my love of Ike soared to new heights.

Shortly thereafter, we took the ferry across the English channel, following the same route that hundreds of thousands of men did on June 6th, 1944. Though I was comfortably being rocked to sleep by the giant ship and the moderate surf, it was not hard to imagine the sheer scale of the invasion as it happened on D-Day. By morning, we arrived into France.

We spent the next five days in Northern France, visiting the famed beaches and several towns close to the beaches where the invasion reached in the early days after the amphibious and airborne landings. I wish to reflect on a few aspects of these five days.

First, our trip was not merely run by a tour guide showing us around. It was run as a staff ride, which means that all of us were assigned characters before the trip. At the locations where our characters did something important, it was our job to reenact our character in the first person. This added a marvelous dimension to the trip that I genuinely underestimated before we actually got to Europe. I played both Maj John Howard, complete with a British accent, who captured Pegasus Bridge in the opening moments of D-Day, and BG Norm Cota, who broke through the stalemate on OMAHA Beach and famously told the Rangers to “lead the way.” I was blown away by just how high-quality the cohort’s presentations were. This added a memorable and immersive experience that I truly cherished.

Second, I was actually concerned about whether I would fully appreciate the scale of D-Day being at the beaches. Standing on JUNO Beach, I couldn’t help but notice just how peaceful it was. Young children were playing in the sand and in the water and, given that this was in fact France, a nearly naked woman was tanning just a few feet away from us. But on the day that forever changed world history, these beaches ran red with blood. Much to my surprise, I found it easy to imagine the chaos, the gunshots, the smoke, and yes, the blood. It sent shivers down my spine. The scale of the invasion force, which I had only read about, became apparent in my imagination standing on Normandy’s many beaches. Hundreds of thousands of young men, valiantly entering into battle to save the free world. They would face rocky terrain, massive cliffs and a tough, fortified and ready opponent. But now that these beaches are home to young children building sand castles, it’s so obvious that the right side had divine assistance in the fight for freedom. Standing on those beaches, I once again felt small, as small as the grains of sand that make up the beaches.

Lastly, I wish to reflect on the American cemetery. I’ve been to my fair share of funerals and cemeteries in my life, but nothing could have possibly prepared me for the American cemetery at Normandy. As you walk through the grounds, you are simply overwhelmed with how many gravestones are there. It’s as if the cemetery goes on forever, that there’s just no end to the destruction and sacrifice. One hears the ground weep.

Walking alone through the cemetery, I came upon one headstone that stopped me in my tracks. I broke down in tears. Among thousands of headstones, showing the name and age of a young man who died during the war, this one said: “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.” Boy, did I weep.

As I told the group later that night, most of us on the trip work in the DC policy space. We’re always trying to get ahead, get published in a bigger outlet, climb up the social and career ladder. But the reason that we don’t speak German, the reason we still live in the free world, is because young men like this one, whose name we don’t even know, gave his tomorrow for our today. Standing in front of his tombstone, I came face to face with my own struggles with pride, and vowed to work hard to remember what’s really important in life. I pray that I never forget this glorious soldier’s sacrifice on my—our—behalf.

I could go on for several thousand more words; the trip was truly life-changing. But I will just end with a few broad thoughts.

The Second World War was a monumental struggle of good against evil. It would forever change what we believed humans were capable of. The Second World War showed that mankind can engage in unthinkable acts of barbarism, but it also showed that ordinary people can rise to meet the most serious of challenges. And though I cautiously subscribe to the Great Man Theory of History, even I recognize that so many of the heroes of WWII were just ordinary people whose deep love for God and country drove them to acts of otherworldly heroism and courage. I remain humbled and inspired by the many acts of valor and bravery I heard about on the trip. If you want to be inspired, if you want to appreciate just what the soul can do, visit Normandy and stand on its many beaches. See its many memorials and monuments. You will undoubtedly leave a different person.

The trip also reminded me of just how important it is for us to get history right. Our post-modern era has devalued the importance of history, and those of us who majored in history know full well that doing so comes with ridicule and questioning glances. But we desperately need history, perhaps now more than ever, and we need to strive to get it right. The eminent military historian Margaret MacMillan once commented that “a citizenry that cannot begin to put the present into context, that has so little knowledge of the past, can too easily be fed stories by those who claim to speak with the knowledge of history and its lessons.” The Second World War altered the course of history. We have inherited its aftermath and we are, in some very real way, still fighting WWII. We owe it to the brave men and women who fought that global conflagration to get its story right. May we always continue to debate and write about one of the most important chapters in world history.

I like to think that I know a thing or two or twelve about WWII. My upbringing was formed in the shadows of WWII, specifically the Holocaust and the Cold War that followed. I became the person I am today because of the impact that the war had on my family. I became a military strategist because of the strategic questions that were center stage during the war, questions that lingered in my mind and soul even as a young child. Needless to say, I have shelves in my library dedicated to WWII. And yet, the trip showed me a side of the war I simply did not know. I learned so many new things in just a short span of time that I now appreciate just how small my nearly 800 book library is. I am so grateful to have learned so much in the manner that I did.

I end on a few notes of gratitude.

First, a big thank you to The Public Interest Fellowship, especially Garrett and Peter, for granting me this once in a lifetime opportunity. This trip has truly changed me for the better and I thank you for inviting me to join.

To Renee, who worked tirelessly to ensure that all of the logistics for the group were in order, and who worked so incredibly hard to ensure that my kosher meals were all ready to go. You made this trip possible for me, and I thank you dearly.

To our guest historian, Charlie Laderman—thank you for gracing us with your presence on the trip. Seeing a young historian such as himself, and yet so accomplished, gave me a bit of hope for humanity. He was truly a walking encyclopedia and dazzled us with his insights throughout the trip. He’s also a very rare breed of historian, which is to say that he’s as fun to be around listening to his lectures as he is grabbing a pint at the local bierhalle. Thanks for being with us, friend.

To Dr. Brian DeToy and his lovely wife Sheryl—there are truly not enough words to express my gratitude to you both. Readers of this post cannot possibly understand what it’s like touring Europe with Dr. DeToy. If I could try to explain what he’s like, I might do it like this: Imagine that God Himself sculpted a man, who would not only become an Army Ranger, who would not only teach countless students history at West Point, who not only has the most pleasant demeanor, but who would also be graced by God with an encyclopedic and intricate knowledge of military history. Yeah, that’s him. Frankly, you’ll just have to try to meet him one day. Dr. DeToy—you made WWII and D-Day come alive for us, and I thank you deeply. And to Sheryl, who made sure that the trip ran smoothly and who paid special attention to me that I was comfortable throughout, thank you so very much. You rock.

Lastly, to the crew. Thank you all for being so awesome. Like I said during our last dinner in Munich, I’m naturally quite shy and reserved, and I was admittedly a bit nervous coming on the trip. But whatever sense of angst I had quickly evaporated. We were really an awesome group. What I loved most about our cohort is that we could provide high quality presentations on our characters by day, spend a dinner talking about serious ideas and problems, and then spend the evening drinking beer and gin and Calvados, enjoying each other’s company. I would not have wished to be on this trip with anyone else. May we all keep in touch for years to come. I have no doubt we’ll all play our part in changing the world on behalf of the good.

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People often think that the job of the historian is to accurately describe what “really happened” in the past. And this, no doubt, is the most basic fundament upon which all historical inquiry is built. But there is an even more important task, which is that the job of the historian is to figure out what the past was really like. Of course, doing so is quite hard. It is incredibly difficult to recreate the social and intellectual structures that enable the historian to “explain” past events. Nevertheless, succeeding in doing that is what separates good from great historians.

Another challenging aspect of history is the attempt—often futile—to write the type of prose that could possibly plunge the reader into the moment the historian describes. One imagines that there are simply no accurate words to imagine what it was like in Pearl Harbor on December 7^th 1941, and equally unimaginable to read prose that captures the savagery of the Crusades. The sad reality of written history is that it very often dulls the experiential side of historical events. One often needs more than history books to imagine what the past was really like.

As readers of this Substack know, October 7^th threw me into the grips of despair. It shattered so much of what I thought I knew about the world. I’ve spent every day since 10/7 studying and tracking the war that has followed, but I’ve never forgotten the feeling I had upon learning the news and then subsequently seeing videos of the attack. And yet, I was woefully unprepared for what I saw yesterday.

Upon entering the Nova exhibit, I would come face to face with what I think was the most harrowing aspect of it all: the smell. The minute I entered the venue, the air smelled like smoke, fire and gunpowder. The room smelled like every gun range I’ve ever been to. I realized that for all intents and purposes, that was in fact where I was. The exhibit items in front of me were all once downrange from guns and RPGs, wielded by some of the world’s most savage terrorists. Immediately, my senses were on high alert.

Walking through the first part of the exhibit, you find yourself walking on sand brought in from the Nova festival, and are greeted by tents, sleeping bags and other personal belongings from those who lost their lives on 10/7. It is terrifying. A moment in time, frozen. In every tent was a cellphone, playing video from both victims and terrorists as the savagery began. My chest began to tense up.

Moving past the tents, I came across another harrowing sight: three totally burned out cars. I honestly lack the words to describe what it’s like standing in front of three cars that are skeletons of themselves. To think that the heroes at Zaka were tasked with combing through every inch of these cars to salvage whatever human remains were there simply boggles the mind.

Upstairs, we were presented with a short video of several survivors of the festival describing just what the festival was like. How alive it made them feel, how no one was ever without a smile. To many Nova festival-goers, the euphoria they felt there was religious. Watching the video, I started to cry. Those infections smiles, the sense of joy and camaraderie…squandered in blood.

And then, the yellow porta-potties. How awful it was to see them. If there is one piece of footage that so often creeps up into my mind’s eye, it’s that video of the terrorists shooting into them. And here they were in front of me, with the bullet holes circled in red marker. Yellow, my favorite color, a color that is otherwise bright and cheerful, stained by blood.

Past the yellow porta potties was a recreation of the Nova festival, complete with the tarp that hung above the DJ and crowd. In the far corner was a recreation of the bar, whose footage of an Israeli calling for signs of life to the dead was playing above it. House music was quietly playing. It really looked like an awesome time. The contrast is simply overwhelming.

Turning a corner, one enters a room that looks eerily similar to the Hall of Names in Yad VaShem. Here, in this dimly lit room, were pictures and brief sentences of the victims. It was hard to read all the names behind a veil of tears. But the one thing that still strikes me is just how young they were. So many of those killed on 10/7 and since were my age. It could have been me. It could have been you.

There were two other parts to the exhibition that deserve special attention. Before heading upstairs to see the video about the Nova festival, there was mock ma’mad, bomb shelter, that one often sees along the road in Israel. Posted outside was a sign, describing the events that took place inside one bomb shelter just like this.

Aner Elyakim Shapira was a 22 year old Staff Sargent from Jerusalem, a soldier in the elite Nahal brigade. Aner was at the Nova festival on 10/7. When the shooting began, Aner started to flee, and soon got word that he was being recalled to his military base. On his way to base, he stopped along Route 232 to seek safety in a roadside bomb shelter. Inside, he found 26 people, all young and all deathly afraid. But have no fear, he said. He told them: “My name is Aner Shapira, I’m a soldier with the Nahal Recon Unit, don’t worry, everything will be alright.”

Soon after, terrorists began closing in on their location. Aner positioned himself at the entrance to the shelter and fought off terrorists who tried to enter. Aner was unarmed. Then, Hamas terrorists began lobbing grenades inside the shelter. Aner caught 8 grenades and threw them back outside. Realizing that they were up against Godly strength, the terrorists fired an RPG. Aner was killed. 16 others were killed and 4, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were taken back to Gaza.

Reading this story, I was glad that I was alone. I started sobbing uncontrollably. Aner’s face was one of reassurance, his smile one of the most disarming smiles I’d ever seen. At 22 years old, he displayed a level of courage, bravery, resolve and strength that I honestly thought didn’t exist on this earth anymore. One imagines that the Greeks didn’t have Gods as powerful as Aner actually was. From where does that strength come from? I do not know. But the next time I go to Israel, I will not leave until I visit and kiss his grave. I used to think that superheroes only belonged to fiction. I think differently today.

The very last part of the exhibit was a testimony. Two survivors of the Nova Massacre, Daniella and Milat, addressed the crowd and told over their stories. Though they were so incredibly brave to publicly recount what was the worst day of their lives, it was so clear that they were still so badly hurting. A dropped water bottle made Milat jump, and it took her a few minutes to recover from the sudden bang. It was clear that the images and sounds still play in their minds on repeat and autopilot.

But it was also clear that they’ve decided that they are going to move forward with their lives. Not move on, but move forward. That they will dance again. When asked if either of them is angry, both responded in the negative. “The world needs more love and less hate,” they said. In my life, I’ve never felt so small. Though I never hope to hear testimony like that ever again, I’m grateful to have experienced Daniella and Milat. “Heroes” doesn’t even cut it.

I write this post at Gate C5 at Dulles airport just outside DC. Thankfully, I’m here early enough for there not to be too many people wondering why the kid in the Under Armour hat is crying over his laptop. In a few hours, I fly out to Europe and in a few days, I’ll stand on the beaches of Normandy. There too, brave kids—all around my age—acted heroically to defeat the Nazis and save the free world. Young soldiers participated in one of the world’s most daring military operations, knowing that death was likely to meet them on the beaches. And yet, they acted. When I stand in the American cemetery, I have no doubt that I’ll feel as small as I did yesterday. All give some, but some give all.

I end where I began. Good military history does something additional, something that separates it from other types of history: it inspires us. We read military history because it is war that offers opportunities for otherworldly heroism and courage. We need stories of courage and heroism, for it serves as a tonic to the evil that permeates the world. Yesterday, I saw and read stories of the most incredible heroism, the most honorable courage. I cannot just let this moment go by. I have to find ways to emulate some aspect of Aner’s heroism, some part of Daniella and Milat’s courage.

I hope you will too.

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1. All of us are intimately aware that drones have changed the character of war. This has been on full display since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, and reached a particularly stunning apex with Ukraine's drone attack on the Russian bomber fleet some days ago. If reports are to be believed, Israeli drones embedded deep within Iran were able to successfully destroy many of the air defense systems, thus opening a wide patch in the sky for Israeli fighters (one is reminded of the stunning operation that began Desert Storm, when the Apaches, flying low and in total darkness, took out the enemy air defenses as well).

These drones seem to have been part of a covert Mossad operation that built drone bases/facilities within Iran. This should be a red flag for Americans, as China continues to buy land next to US military installations. Given that the Chinese owned DJI Drones is the largest drone manufacturer in the world, this presents a serious national security risk. If those drones, which are so widely used and deployed in America, ever come under total Chinese control they pose a grave threat to our military bases stateside. Given what we've seen take place in drone warfare over the past month alone, I think it is imperative that we pressure the White House and Pentagon to address this latent, grave danger.

2. It is my sincerest hope that we change how we speak about "escalation" in modern strategic studies. Escalation, in my view, was a Cold War era concept that related to military actions that two parties of equal parity made toward one another. The reason that the Cuban Missile Crisis was escalatory by the Soviet Union is because, broadly speaking, both the US and Soviet Union had a parity of military force, thereby ratcheting up the risks that the conflict erupt into nuclear war. The same cannot be said about Israel and Iran. Israel has always enjoyed military supremacy over Iran in all domains. Thus, its actions cannot be declared "escalatory." We are seeing this to be true, as the Israeli strikes have, so far, been met with minimal Iranian retaliation. If anything, they've helped secure the prospect of long-term peace.

3. Lastly, I have long said that air-power theory needs to come back under serious scrutiny and thinking. Yes, we should not be completely and solely tempted by, as Conrad Crane put it, "The Lure of Strike." But air power, it seems to me, has taken a back seat since the end of the Cold War, and naval power has risen in its place. Yet drone warfare is changing the character of what it means to have air dominance in ways I don't think we've totally appreciated. Precision bombing is likely to still be a feature of all American wars, even, I would argue, in the largely naval conflict over Taiwan, should that heaven forbid occur. We need renewed thinking about air power in the 21st century. The IAF operations over the past year and a half deserve our special and critical attention.

Godspeed to the IDF.

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Ten days after I published that piece here on Substack, I wrote a piece for The Public Discourse about decoupling technology from everyday life. As I tried to minimize my reliance on digital technology, it became so readily apparently that you cannot navigate much of the world, especially the working world, without your damned smartphone. I briefly made a switch to a dumbphone, only to realize that I was never able to carry it regularly, because it did not allow me to perform my job duties. This is obviously not something unique to my employer; this is the reality of all modern day white collar jobs. I truly believe that the only two workplaces that do not allow cellphones are the Supreme Court of the United States and any SCIF throughout the nation. If only we were all so lucky.

So if I couldn’t ditch Samsung for Nokia, what could I do? Well, I made a few changes to my smartphone life. First, and perhaps the best change I made, was to disable my read receipts on WhatsApp. If I was going to attempt to regain my control over my time, I needed to signal to my friends and family that I would respond to their messages on my time. By turning off read receipts, I could view messages without feeling the pressure of the blue check marks that would lead me to respond right away. Were people upset with me that I was not responding as quickly as I had been before? Yes, without a doubt. But my relationship to WhatsApp and texting has been a lot better ever since and I have no regrets over that choice. Long live the grey check marks!

Next, I’ve set automated Do Not Disturb times throughout the day. At select times, my phone will go into Do Not Disturb mode and go greyscale as well. During these blocks, my phone is less appealing to me and I am not bothered by its incessant pings and vibrations. Even if all I do during that time is let my mind drift and daydream, as opposed to say reading or writing, I feel better and am proud of the time that I am not staring directly into the abyss of a brightly lit screen 6 inches from my face.

I’ve also tried to be much more deliberate about my reading schedule, setting aside time to put in regular, consistent reading. And yet, I’ve noticed one real stumbling block that I did not appreciate until recently. As long time readers of this blog know, I used to read about 100 books a year, which even I admit was a bit ludicrous. But I did so in my childhood house in Philadelphia, which provided me the ability to read in a “third space.” In other words, my bedroom—my third space— was free from my computer and laptop—it was my analog room, and that allowed me to find a space that was fundamentally free from glowing screens. Even when I would read in my makeshift home office back home, it was big enough that sitting in my reading chair at the other end of the room with my back towards my computer desk provided just the right amount of physical distance from screens. In the apartment I now live in, there is simply minimal room for a proper third space. When you live in such close proximity to your devices, it is hard to escape them. The couch where I most comfortably read in my apartment, for instance, only fits inside my office, which makes solitary reading much more difficult. There is that computer, the one that I built, calling me, beckoning to me. I try as often as I can these days to read outside, but it does not happen as frequently as I might prefer. I am still reading, but I wish I could do better.

I mentioned a few other goals in my Substack from January. One of them was wanting to develop a physical media library, especially with CDs. Well, the CDs are collecting dust on my shelves, simply because the CD player that some of us were hoping would come out never did. The FiiO CD player seems to have either stopped production, or simply hasn’t made its way to the states yet. I’m still hoping for this to become a reality. If anyone here has suggestions for a CD player, do let me know.

Even though I’ve been having regular, physical letter correspondences with friends and mentors, I have not written as much by hand as I would have liked. I have never been able to maintain a daily journal habit, and that sadly died out pretty soon into the New Year. I’ve hit a dry spell with writing poetry and short fiction, so those creative notebooks still have their spines intact. This is the area that I want to specifically double down on, for I know that regular writing by hand will most certainly be a balm to my anxious mind. This too, I think, requires a third space, but that cannot be an excuse. I’ll write in the shower if I have to. I ask the readers here to hold me accountable to writing more by hand.

Lastly, I mentioned wanting to get back into photography. This, I’m proud to say, I succeeded in doing. I treated myself to my dream camera after I accomplished a major life goal. It has been a source of immense joy. Not only do I find the retro, manual controls of the Fuji XT-5 to be incredibly satisfying, but I have enjoyed going to new places with my camera and not having to touch my phone to capture our beautiful world. I’m quite pleased with this purchase and idea. You can see some of my photos here and here.

All in all, trying to go analog has proven exceedingly difficult, and not for lack of trying. We have given up a real part of our humanity to the digital overlords, who make the totalitarianism of Stalin look childish. As AI gets “better” by the day, we will be pushed to the limits of what we will further relinquish to computer chips and screens. Though I have not succeeded in my analog ways as much as I would have liked, I am not giving up. Our very way of life—of Being in the world— is under threat by digital technology. I will do whatever I can to protect whatever I have left.

Wish me better luck.

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