The Haeft: An Introduction to my substack
I have posted a bunch of old essays from my cancelled blog. I’m posting this introduction again, to bookend the old material. Going forward from Jan 2025 everything will be new.
A few years ago I was writing a blog. It was going pretty well. I accumulated a large number of essays on issues relating to political economy, post-liberalism, limits to growth, conservatism …woke….oh dear, that’s where it all went wrong. I wrote a piece called ‘peak radical gender theory?’. I can’t remember the details. With hindsight, the proposition was obviously wrong. We were nowhere near the peak. However it was enough to get a couple of hundred activists complaining to my place of employment. I was subsequently asked by the then Dean to shut up shop — which I did for the sake of my wife. This was the height of covid. Everyone was going a little bonkers. I shut up, stopped commenting on FB, closed my Twitter account — and I would like to say things got better. Of course they didn’t. The harassment continued at work. I am still keeping my head down and praying that I keep my job — although this is by no means certain.
The one great thing that has happened is my conversion to Catholicism, along with three of my children and my wife (already a Catholic by birth). As well as being a source of joy and bonding for our family, and opening up a new depth of mutual understanding with our wide circle of Christian (not only Catholic) friends in Canada, I have discovered an entirely unexpected metaphysical and theological grounding for my post-liberal political instincts - and the hitherto strange admixture of libertarian, communitarian and ecological ideas that have been bubbling away in my back brain for decades. Imagine my surprise on discovering that E.F. Schumacher was an orthodox Catholic ( which I wrote up here). Reading Robert Barron’s The Priority of Christ, I got the same feeling of doors opening as I had, as a young and very naive student on reading Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Over the last few years I have begun, as best I can, to inhabit this post-liberal, Catholic response to modernity, not only in my writing and approach to political economy, but in my personal life. I now regularly take part in Exodus 90 retreat with a group of online brothers who feel like very old friends. And although I am more and more dismayed by the downward spiral of the culture war and political events in the UK and Europe, I find that faith really does create a buffer preventing jaded world weariness and cynicism — AKA political realism — from extinguishing hope and convivial good will.
Just recently, the chaotic joy ensuing from my wife’s rescuing of two 6-week old kittens from certain death in a storm, really has felt like a minor miracle. Not least their antics and our business has been soaking up and partly extinguishing the pain arising from TDS-related excommunication by one of our closest friends. Tensions with liberal friends following the American election (politics in another country!) have been balanced by a deepening of our relationships with an ecumenical circle of Christian homeschoolers. The ideological polarization has been awful and traumatic. But this has made the love and nurture all the more timely and … well I guess kind of providential.
Albeit imperfectly stepping back from politics and culture-warring at work and on my doorstep, I have tried…I do keep trying … to learn from my wife’s example. Finding the conflict depressing and stressful, she tries to enact love and generosity every day — for instance by cooking often for our priest who cares for a retired Bishop and a couple of trainees. This is a spontaneous thing that just sort of happened. And as she always says ‘why wouldn’t you love’? Love has been squeezed to the margins on both sides of the culture war, but most of all I think (I hope not too pointedly) by the ‘be kind’ and ‘hate doesn’t live here’ brigade. It’s ironic how often ‘kindness’ seems to involve a circling of wagons and an orchestrated shunning. Anyway, her private acts of generosity regularly suffuse our whole household. It turns out the love can be infectious.
Today it’s Boxing Day. We have friends coming over for a home-brewed pub quiz. I will drink some whisky before giving up again for three months as part of Exodus 90 2025. Starting in 2025, I will be writing regularly and posting a series of shorter essays and academic articles. This will mostly be with a view to an ongoing process of personal digestion and cogitation, preparatory to the book I will be writing for Polity Press. I have also created a curated group of FB friends with whom I can communicate without, I hope, consequences for my family. I’m very much hoping that my own brand of post-liberal political economy and commentary will be dry enough to avoid ruffling too many feathers, but honest enough and sufficiently well-informed to contribute something to the wider discourse.
By the way, ‘Haeft’ means handle or hilt (as in the hilt of a sword) in Anglo Saxon. It is also cognate with ‘heft’ which in Northern England and Scotland refers to the bonding of sheep to a particular pasture or landscape. Another etymological root refers to captivity and bondage. I just like the sound of the word, and these associations provide a lot to chew on.
Very thoughtful. Im going to enjoy reading your work.