Digest #2
Manuel, Who? Parenting and Courtiers
I said last time that these Digests would be paywalled going forward, but I am a benevolent monarch… I mean, single ruler of a republic. Totally different thing. So, the first one of 2026 will remain free. After that, the hammer drops. No reprieve!
Parental Advisory
Scott Yenor has a good critical review of Scott Galloway’s new masculinity book over at American Reformer. Do read the whole thing. There may be much to commend the manosphere—missed the boat on it myself, kind of like the YRR—but everything I see come out of it besides encouraging men to have ambition and not be slovenly or fat is subpar.
Discussing fatherhood, Yenor observes that “Galloway renders dads in the image of pals while ignoring the importance of a little stoicism and self-control in order to raise boys to be men.” Fathers are not supposed to be best buddies with their sons. Fathers should have their own deep and “dangerous” relationships with peers. The corrective Yenor offers will stick with you:
“Fathers should treat their sons as potential friends in the future—but not as friends while they are young. You are helping to shape the character and purposes of your future friends and allies—make them worthy of it while being serious about it yourself.”
Some more parenting advice popped up on my timeline in the unlikely source of Curtis Yarvin. Although maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise. As I’ve said somewhere before, if you read early modern political thought and early modern parenting manuals, they’re basically the same.
This (and Yenor’s article) reminds me, as almost occurrence or comment can, of something in Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory, portions of which could readily fit in the next section below. Yarvin is right (see later in thread) that the parent has to exercise and thereby teach their children the meaning of sovereignty, and that discipline must induce a spirit of surrender. To rule, you must first learn to obey, etc. It’s not just about correcting particular behavior but, in a real sense, teaching children these bigger things about both God and man.
Baxter explains that discipline, indeed, is about subduing the will in the child, but it’s not just the command and punishment that communicate sovereignty and good rule to them. The father must also maintain his reputation, both in his character—meditate on the law day and night— so that he is not “contemptable and vile” to his inferiors, and by prudence and control, but also not neglecting authority. “If you suffer children and servants but a little while to have the head, and to have, and say, and do what they will, your government will be but a name or image.”
The hippie parenting Yarvin describes is just that, name only. Yet, a good lord is moderate, charting the middle course between rigour and “soft subjection.” Neither is he overly familiar with his inferiors. (To Yenor’s point),
“If you make your children and servants your play-fellows or equals, and talk to them, and suffer them to talk to you, as your companions… they will scarce ever endure to be governed by you.”
Your rule should be prudent, moderate, and tailored to the “different tempers of your inferiors,” dealing with them “as they can bear,” but it must still be real rule. (Again, all this is readily transferable to politics.)
Well governed children will know what good government looks like and, in turn, how to govern well. I’m not one to boil all societal ills down to problems in the home, but if you have a generation of people that don’t even know what good government looks like, you have to wonder.
Better Thy Self
In 2026, read some real self-help manuals. Become, as the Zoomers say, a “full package mogger!” The Michael Knowles interview with Clavicular was a fascinating, somewhat depressing, and definitely weird, but useful if only for the window it provides into Zoomer manosphere culture such as it is. (Just listen to the guy talk about how much of a time suck it is to find a girl he wants to date.)
In any case, what the Zoomers are feebly grasping is nothing new. That they are is maybe a good sign. The last time self-help materials were this popular—different medium to be sure—was about four or five hundred years ago. The Zoomers (and the rest of us) just need some proper perspective and orientation. I plan to pull from an summarize some of these in future posts here beginning with the all-time classic, The Book of the Courtier (1528), by Baldassare Castiglione. You can read it online, but I recommend getting a physical copy. It’s a dialogue with Castiglione’s commentary at the outset of each book. It’s all about how to be a good courtier (or knight): how to present well, what skills men (and women) should master, how to handle difficult rulers, how to properly ask for favors, etc. Dialogues weren’t uncommon for this genre, but from what I can tell, most were straightforward instruction manuals. In a way, the mirrors for princes literature is a subgenre of this self-improvement genre.
The Book of the Courtier is where the concept of sprezzatura originates. “Studied carelessness” is how it is usually understood—the appearance that you’re not trying hard—but more accurate is to say gracefulness and avoidance of affectation. When I was in law school, people used to brag (absurdly) about how much time they spent studying. No one was actually spending 12-15 hours in the library every day and, if they were, less than half of that was constituted productive studying. The custom was wild affectation, an attempt to both impress and intimidate peers. This is not what the good courtier does.
Nonchalance is a way to understand it but only as the art of concealment. The ideal courtier does, in fact, work hard to master his skills and talents but he does not boast about how hard he works or let on that his life is laborious. Everyone knows that mastery requires effort, so there is no reason to point it out. Rather, let your actions speak for themselves, let your mastery be apparent.
There’s also a certain charm to nonchalance, or concealment of talent, like when Winston Churchill would intentionally insert ums into his speeches to appear less polished and more relatable. You see a more extreme version of this in another, less illustrious prime minister, Boris Johnson. The disheveled, haphazard persona conceals great effort. Indeed, it takes effort to adopt sprezzatura. Those who do, ironically, reveal themselves as the hardest workers but with plausible deniability. To be sure, this is an aristocratic virtue. That’s the whole point. The identity of the hardworking, blue-collar man does not fit here.
More on all that later. There are other evergreen advice and observations in Castiglione, like this (from discussion of looks and appearance):
“[The courtier should not] appear soft and feminine as so many try to do, when they not only curl their hair and pluck their eyebrows but also preen themselves like the most wanton and dissolute creatures imaginable. Indeed, they appear so effeminate and languid in the way they walk, or stand, or do anything at all, that their limbs look as if they are about to fall apart; and they pronounce their words in such a drawling way that it seems as if they are about to expire on the spot… Since Nature has not in fact made them the ladies they want to seem and be, they should be treated not as honest women but as common whores and be driven out from all gentlemanly society, let alone the Courts of great lords.”
As I said, evergreen material.
Robert Greene has made a fortune off repurposing the Renaissance self-improvement manuals, sort of. Why can’t we all? Someone needs to write a new, true self-improvement manual. Get 50 Cent to co-author if you have to. Not Emerson’s style. That was low class and too personal. We need one that distills early modern form and insights accommodated to the present. We need a manual that contains elite aspirations, not just self-aggrandizement and get rich quick schemes. Does anyone even know how to behave like an elite anymore? Is there a standard? We’ve lost much in the absence of monarchies and their courts. Not least of which is the context for the books I’m talking about. Nevertheless, these relics still offer contemporary applications.
As someone put it to me recently, when we start seeing political utopias being written again (like Thomas More’s and James Harrington’s) we’ll know we’ve emerged from the muck and mire of the present. Renaissance etiquette books are utopias (as the interlocutors in Castiglione constantly say). We’ll see them again when it’s time.
Please Do the Reading
Here are a couple other suggested self-improvement manuals below. Many of these, especially in England, focused on the education of youth for polite society.
James Cleland, Hērō-paideia, or The institution of a young noble man (1607).
Richard Brathwaite, The English gentleman containing sundry excellent rules or exquisite observations, tending to direction of every gentleman, of selecter ranke and qualitie; how to demeane or accommodate himselfe in the manage of publike or private affaires (1630).
More in the mirror for princes vein is the famous The Book Named Governor (1531) written to Henry VIII by Thomas Elyot. It was reprinted a few times in the 1960s so you can still find print copies.
Supplements
There’s much about the WASPs (even the style) that embodied the Book of the Courtier for us. More on this another time. I’ll save real commentary for later, but Tanner Greer’s “35 Theses on the WASPs” is worth the read, as are his related articles hyperlinked throughout, and his American Affairs review mentioned therein. Greer is excellent, but Yarvin’s response thread is (per usual) worth considering. In some ways, the disagreement just boils down to how you slice the whole thing up—continuity v. discontinuity. To what extent was FDR really a traitor to his class? Et cetera. Both are correct in their own way.
