Thread by @allenf32

I had an important realisation today that may be of particular interest to @ktlannan, @MartyBent, @saifedean, @FractalEncrypt, but more too, I'm sure.

Bitcoiners should learn about and champion Roger Scruton.

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now that it's clear bitcoin will win as money, we should take inspiration from those I tagged above and be more imaginative about the knock-on effects.

in this case: beauty.

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vimeo.com/128428182

Roger Scruton had two major projects of passion in his professional life: to subvert and destroy the Soviet Union with the power of ideas and rational discussion, and to restore an appreciation for classical standards of beauty to pride of place in Western culture.

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the first he achieved in his lifetime, for decades being laughed off by the academic establishment as a reactionary crank, while literally risking his life doing his part to try to increase human freedom in the world.

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the second, he unfortunately did not, and it honestly makes me a little sad that he won't have realised how close we were when he died just over a year ago.

he would have signed up to @BitcoinUrbanism in a heartbeat, and probably contributed too😂

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bitcoinurbanism.substack.com

I had the incredible privilege of having Scruton as a professor while an undergrad, not too long before he passed away.

and while I learned a fair amount from him about how Schopenhauer was a crackpot, the primary benefit was in being present for his off-the-cuff musings.

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one day, he walked into the lecture hall, which happened to be in a hideously ugly modern building, got his slides ready, looked around, sighed, and said,

"you know the distinguishing feature of modern architecture is how little it seems to care about actual human beings."

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this building was one of the only in St Andrews - a stunningly beautiful place in general, by the way - that had been built under a fiat standard.

(bet you can't guess which)

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but even beyond his profound philosophical contribution on aesthetics, Scruton is a role model for his attitude to living a good and principled life.

this obituary by @BarbaraRKay is a beautiful introduction for the unfamiliar:

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quillette.com/2020/01/14/rem…

he was shunned by the academic establishment because he refused to entertain their elaborate and sophistic bullshit whenever it flew in the face of common sense.

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when he was finally knighted in 2016, less for contributions to the academy and more, once again, for literally risking his life for decades on end to defeat the evil of communism, you can imagine the fury from capitalism-funded socialist goons.

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often lazily branded a mere "conservative" or even "reactionary", as little more than a dismissive slight not to be elaborated upon, Scruton in fact had a sophisticated and learned thesis on the importance of tradition and the danger of casting it aside.

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every remotely serious thinker recognised and recognises it as such, and it is testament to how generally stupid the public dialogue has become that this is nonetheless not the fashionable take amongst the chattering classes.

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my friend, @MattPolProf, very much a progressive and anti-conservative, and very much a serious thinker, lamented this in his touching tribute, also from around the time of Scruton's passing:

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merionwest.com/2020/01/16/on-…

and unlike some slippery thinkboiz that come to mind, Scruton always made it entirely clear what he meant.

He was not at all averse to snarkily decimating slippery thinkboiz either, and if that meant blowing up a theory of everything: tough shit, get a better theory.

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it should not at all be a surprise that I could come up with tongue-in-cheek nonsense like the following, because I believe his work, and his life, is a perfectly natural inspiration to us all:

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https://twitter.com/allenf32/status/1261608756707831810

Scruton strikes me as just as much a bitcoiner as anybody else - all the more so because he contributed so greatly and yet without ever knowing or seeking anything in return.

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when we win, it will in part be a tribute to his legacy. he will not be forgotten.

😊🙏

(the end)

p.s. @bitstein had this realisation at least 4 years before I did. I literally had it today 😂

https://twitter.com/bitstein/status/885637644650151938

I actually didn't even have twitter then. this is like reading about things that happened before I was born.

p.p.s. fun story: this thread came to me when I went for a walk at lunch and arrived at these two buildings across the street from each another.

I thought: this is so depressing. Scruton would be appalled. good thing bitcoin fixes this. shame he never knew that ...