parochialism

I’ve seen a great many essays of this kind over the decades. I’m no longer surprised by them — I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused — but we shouldn’t forget that the radical parochialism of elite opinion is quite a remarkable thing. Manvir Singh thinks Christianity is dead (murdered by “the natural sciences”) — someone should tell the world’s two billion Christians — and that suspicion of our moral self-justification began with Nietzsche — someone should tell St. Paul. But for Singh, ideas that aren’t present (a) in his social cohort and (b) at this instant simply don’t exist. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Manvir Singh.”