ACCIDENTAL OBSERVATIONS: THE METAPHYSICS OF REACTIONARIES: AMISH VS HASSIDIM In

ACCIDENTAL OBSERVATIONS:

THE METAPHYSICS OF REACTIONARIES:

AMISH VS HASSIDIM

In a coffee shop in Leavenworth. An Amish family, father, perhaps 60, mother about the same, and adult daughter perhaps 30, ordering iced mocha coconut coffee drinks with whipped cream. I didn’t take a photo, because I didn’t want to be rude. So description will have to do: they were dressed impeccably, and had nearly perfect, radiant, clear skin. The man was gentlemanly and spoke with a few other customers, asking about where they lived, and other friendly idle talk. The women were obviously avoiding eye contact and conversation.

My own reaction was precognitive and involuntary: I treat these people with sacred reverence. They are the souls of the germanic peoples. Certainly more so than priests, public intellectuals, or politicians. Probably because there is no question as to the honesty of there commitment and no political art of persuasion we must defend ourselves from. They are a statement of truth, purely by their actions.

Most of us with northern european heritage long for our medieval, agrarian, communal, and familial past, even as we celebrate our longer lives, greater health, lack of hunger, freedom from brutal physical labor, and insulation from violence. These people are the embodiment of the idea of our past, perhaps more so than the actuality of it.

I suppose the Jews may think of their Hassidic sect with the same reverence. (Although as I understand it, opinions about the hassidim – particularly their overbreeding and communist dependence upon redistribution in Israel – like most opinions in the Jewish community, vary pretty widely.)

Because I simply haven’t spent time thinking about this topic before, it’s pretty obvious that both reactionary sects represent the different world views of Germanic and Hebrew peoples: social actions and individual responsibility versus individual thoughts, and collectivism. Action versus mysticism, both wrapped in religious ritual and insular pacifism that protects their alternate reality from competition with the chaos of the modern world. This difference can be reduced to: the people of the land and action versus the people of the mind and words.