John R Harris

Nightmare Made of Dreams John R Harris

The "dreams" of the title are ambitiously creative but fully feasible methods of living frugally and self-sufficiently. They involve transforming dreary American suburbia into yesteryear's safe, stable, picturesque villages of Mom-and-Pop shops nestled within residences and interlaced with sidewalks full of pedestrians-yet transformed, as well, by advanced technology supplying touches like attic greenhouses and backyard fish-growing pools. Car traffic would be thinned to a fraction of current levels, oil dependency would steeply decline, violent crime rates would plummet, and people would rediscover the humane pleasures of casual, civil exchange. The "nightmare" is the reality that looms ever larger as we seek to address our traffic problems, our energy consumption, our soaring crime rate, our epidemic of incivility, and all the rest with technology whose long-term effects will scarcely leave us human. Artificial Intelligence in various forms will insulate us from some aspects of the steel-and-concrete jungle, no doubt-and from interaction with our fellow creatures. Government will increasingly find one-size-fits-all solutions that give us health and safety at the expense of the risk-taking so often expressive of our individuality. Indeed, we can hardly avoid gradual fusion with our robots as we are lured into a lifestyle that allows high tech to "serve" us better. John Harris, a literary scholar with thirty years' experience in academe and the founder of the Center for Literate Values, spent much of whatever leisure he found outside the classroom trying to argue in writing for his "paleo-conservative" vision of life (a vision which shares the values of "Southern agrarians" like Richard Weaver). Over these same years, however, and often due to observing how social media and related technologies were undermining college curricula, he came to realize more and more that the only garden he could cultivate was his own. This collection of essays spanning more than a decade represents a kind of conservatism rarely seen on the national stage nowadays: a conserving kind. Dr. Harris's love of the quiet, rhythmic, civilized life wherein nature plays a prominent part would attract many people, one might suppose, who would never use the "c" word to describe themselves. Unfortunately, his vision has yellowed with time, and his final writings in this volume are sometimes little short of dire prophecy. We have missed our opportunity to conserve culture; now we must concentrate on conserving the means of physical survival as the consequences of our social, political, and moral decisions hem us in.