Hardihood Books Roundup - February 2025
Winter is Ending
Hi,
Welcome to the Hardihood Books February Roundup. I hope winter has treated you well.
In Case You Missed It:
My first essay this month was “Skiing and Flow,” which I began almost four years ago. If you read it, you’ll understand why. The original bits from prior years are preserved with minor alterations. In the essay, I refer to the concept of flow, which you can read more about here, but which is a phenomenon in sports and art where one becomes totally absorbed by one’s task and loses track of the world around.
After that, I published a free essay, “In Defense of Ideology,” in which I argue that it’s better to know where you are and what you believe than to go with your gut. Most ideologies in their best forms are coherent, consistent lines of thought developed over many years by dialogue and argument between various political thinkers. Of course, most people only know an overly simplified version of ideologies, in some cases a version so simplified as to be alien from the original meaning of the movement (see, fascism). Still, very few people are original thinkers, and most people have unexamined assumptions about the way the world works which informs the way they interpret new information, assumptions about which they are often unaware. Which is to say that everyone does have an ideology, and some people know what theirs is. I do not make the case for or against any particular ideology. My main thrust is that it is better to understand your own thinking and mental processes and to be aware of the history of ideas in which you believe, than it is to avoid thinking about them.
“Studies Say” is a free story poking fun at modern science. I think it’s funny. I think also that I had originally planned to have it paywalled and forgot when I was publishing it, so most of the posts this month are free to everyone to read.
“The Dragon Men” is a fantasy story (also free) about a young woman and her grandmother in a time of political turmoil. It is about the age-old temptation human beings have to fall for demagoguery. More to the point, it is about the folly of historical illiteracy, or of believing that “this time is different.” The quotation may be apocryphal, but I heard that Benjamin Disraeli once said, “The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.” In other words, we make the same mistakes over and over. I tend to believe that human beings do, eventually, learn, but it takes a very long time and quite a number of mistakes and even then it’s no sure thing. The story is also about the folly of youth who don’t heed their elders. From the rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, to the Italian fascisti who took over Italy, to the students who fueled the Russian Revolution in 1917, youth have often been the most enthusiastic demographic for totalitarian revolution.
Finally, I published two more installments in War in the Galaxy. It will go behind the paywall late this spring, so there’s still time to catch up on the first twenty chapters.
From the Archive:
With the possibility of American abandonment of Ukraine looming, I thought I would highlight a short story I wrote about the war in March of 2023. I’ll also highlight a very short story I wrote in September of 2021, after America betrayed our allies in Afghanistan, about a young Afghan man who is murdered by the Taliban for being a musician. Actions which have very small impact in our own lives can have extraordinary impact in other people’s lives.
In Closing:
You can email me, or reach out via Twitter (@benconnelly6712) or LinkedIn. You can also follow me on Notes, where I restack articles from other Substackers.
Thank you for reading and subscribing.
Cheers,
Ben Connelly