Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

July 2025

Homocentric Universe

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN:

Wolfgang Smith’s Legacy: Smith observed that while the sciences’ blind adherence to a flat material reality permits a certain utility, it does not account for the multidimensional world in which we actually live. (Scott Ventureyra, 7/18/25, Crisis)

One of Smith’s most profound distinctions was between the corporeal and the physical, not merely as empirical categories but as ontological realities. The corporeal refers to the fully realized world of lived experience, rich with quality, meaning, and symbols of what we truly encounter as beings-in-the-world. The physical, by contrast, lacks intrinsic being; it is not a full level of existence but something ontologically deficient. Drawing from the metaphysical insight of St. Thomas Aquinas, Smith described the physical as akin to materia signata quantitate—matter designated by quantity, which is something that lies midway between being and non-being. It is not yet actualized by form and thus lacks full existence.

This “sub-existential” status explains why modern physics, which focuses solely on this domain, provides only a fragmented account of reality rather than a complete one, abstracted from the concrete and meaningful whole. In Smith’s view, this is precisely what makes quantum mechanics both fascinating and ontologically unstable, since it operates in a realm of semi-reality that permits technological utility but cannot account for the fullness of existence. Without the reintegration of the corporeal, modern science remains blind to the symbolic and spiritual dimension of the cosmos.
In Smith’s view, this is precisely what makes quantum mechanics both fascinating and ontologically unstable, since it operates in a realm of semi-reality that permits technological utility but cannot account for the fullness of existence.

For Smith, quantum theory itself hinted at a metaphysical order that science could not account for. The collapse of the wave function, for instance, required an ontology that distinguished between the corporeal and physical domains

Physics depends on the Observer and then denying one existed.

Identitarianism

EITHER A CHRISTIAN OR AN IDENTITARIAN:

Time With Erich Fromm: A Cautionary Tale (Art Kusserow, 7/18/25, Voegelin View)


Fromm’s comment on the inherent conflict described above might best be summarized here: “There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual. However, if the economic, social and political conditions do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom.”


The ”relief from uncertainty” Fromm describes is to be found in identification with a leader who promises “freedom” from such uncertainty. The identification with such leaders, who are often elevated to “messianic” status, and the fantasied relief they promise, explains the psychological underpinnings of the supposed “populism” broad-based media often struggle to explain.

Law/Crime

ALL THINGS IN MODERATION:


Mission Accomplished for the Roberts Court? (The Law & Liberty Podcast, 7/15/25)


The Roberts Court delivered a number of wins for conservatives in its recent term, and Professor John O. McGinnis thinks it may mark the maturation of the Court’s administrative state jurisprudence. Host and contributing editor James Patterson is joined by Professor McGinnis, who explains both the broader trends of the Supreme Court, and some of this year’s major cases, including Mahmoud v. Taylor, US v. Skrmetti, and Trump v. CASA.

A good look at how consrvative–in every sense of the word–the current Court is.

Health

A RANGE OF PLACEBOES:

64 widely available “mood-boosting” supplements are put to the test (Bronwyn Thompson, July 14, 2025, New Atlas)

The most comprehensively studied products were omega-3s (39 trials), St John’s wort (38), prebiotics (18) and vitamin D (14) – as well as saffron (18), which is popular in the Middle East and Asia.

As far as relieving depression symptoms, there was little conclusive evidence that omega-3 supplements had any impact; the scientists found more studies produced no effects than those that showed some, compared to a placebo. In 2021, we covered one such study that failed to show omega-3 supplements played any role in treating depression.

St John’s wort and saffron had the strongest positive outcomes, with studies showing these two distinct supplements worked, compared to a placebo, and were on par with existing prescription antidepressants. And gut-health probiotics, as well as vitamin D, reduced depressive symptoms to some degree in their respective controlled trials.

But overall, the researchers found a distinct lack of multiple trials for many emerging OTC products, which shows how far the science is lagging behind as the wellbeing supplements market continues to grow. More than 40 of the 64 products had only a single clinical study completed on them to date.

Do whatever you believe will work.

Just So Stories

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS SPECIES:

Princeton Study Maps 200,000 Years of Human–Neanderthal Interbreeding (Princeton University Science Daily, 7/14/25)

Now, a group of researchers made up of geneticists and artificial intelligence specialists is uncovering new layers of that shared history. Led by Joshua Akey, a professor at Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, the team has found strong evidence of genetic exchange between early human groups, pointing to a much deeper and more complex relationship than previously understood.

“This is the first time that geneticists have identified multiple waves of modern human-Neanderthal admixture,” said Liming Li, a professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and Developmental Biology at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, who performed this work as an associate research scholar in Akey’s lab.

Anglospherics Conservative Thought Republican Liberty

CONSERVING ANGLOSPHERIC LIBERTY:

Timeless Whiggish Principles of Liberty (Mark Tooley, July 11, 2025, Providence)

These days between America’s Independence Day of July 4 and France’s Bastille Day on July 14 should provoke reflection about liberty. Whiggery is the label I prefer for the Anglo-American tradition of ordered liberty. It originates in the Anglo Protestant political ferment of the 1600s but offers universal principles to all. These principles are especially important to remember now.

In 1705 the Anglo-Irish statesman Robert Molesworth, who had lived through much of this ferment, penned “Principles of a Real Whig.” These principles helped define America. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison had copies of his works.

Molesworth’s Whiggery calls for three balanced branches of government, legal equality for all, economic liberty, policies for social harmony, freedom of religion and conscience, legislatures controlling government expenses, naturalization of immigrants into productive citizens, liberty of the press, and legitimate public works such as highways and public buildings, plus controls against monopolies, and a strong national defense.

Whiggery is chiefly about liberty and guarding against arbitrary power. It assumes a Christian anthropology about humanity’s fallen nature and also optimistically assumes humanity’s capacity for providential improvement. It is realistic and hopeful. It assumes that society will prosper most when free people, amid their differences, can exercise their creativity and pursue virtue.

Health

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

Five Psychological Tricks You Can Use to Make Yourself Feel Happier: Hack your brain and feel better. (Jeff Somers, July 3, 2025, Life Hacker)

For a quick mood booster, try the One Minute Rule: Identify tasks and chores that you can accomplish in one minute or less. These will be simple things, like putting something away, responding to a text, or packing up an item to return. Because these tasks are quickly accomplished, they take relatively little effort to engage with—but the sense of accomplishment is often the same as with larger, more complex tasks.

Escape yourself.

Art

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

What if every artwork you’ve ever seen is a fake?: I was shocked to learn just how many pieces of art sold around the world are forgeries. But should finding out something is a cheap dupe really make us enjoy it less? (Nell Stevens, 10 Jul 2025, The Guardian)

Many years ago, I met a man in a pub in Bloomsbury who said he worked at the British Museum. He told me that every single item on display in the museum was a replica, and that all the original artefacts were locked away in storage for preservation.

I was shocked and challenged him. It surely could not be the case that millions of annual visitors to the British Museum were encountering and experiencing not tangible, concrete treasures of human history, but the shallow simulacra of replicas. I may have even used the term “fraud”.

Yet on my way home that night, I began to question my own experiences at the British Museum. I wondered what it meant if the Greek water jar I had been so moved by, depicting a woman who may have been Sappho bent over a scroll, had in fact been a worthless copy. Did that make the experience any less real?

No.

Anglospherics Books

THE NIGHT WATCH:

Life’s Value: a review of The Children of Men by p. d. james (Alan Jacobs, August 1, 1993, First Things)

It would be unwarranted to call this novel an apology for Christianity, and yet the title encourages us to think along such lines. Its origin is the ninetieth Psalm—in this case, the version that appears in the burial rite of the old (1662) Anglican Book of Common Prayer, a rite that is not just quoted but that actually figures in the novel: “Lord, thou hast been our refuge: from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: thou art God from everlasting, and world without end. Thou turnest man to destruction: again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday: seeing that is past as a watch in the night.”

This might sound positively evangelistic; after all, in the context of the burial rite, it is a call to sinners to repent while they still may. But in the novel the character who pronounces these words believes neither in them nor in God. He is the narrator of much of the book and the protagonist of the whole, Theo Faron, an Oxford don (Merton College, Victorian history) and a skeptic—or rather, a man too tired and hopeless and beaten down by life to believe in anything. (In this he resembles almost everyone else in his world.) It is one of James’ deftest touches to make her main character an unbeliever; indeed, only two characters in the book are Christians, and only one of them, a woman named Julian, a major figure. (Yes, we are invited to think of Julian of Norwich.) Thus Julian’s faith and Theo’s lack of it have equal claims upon our attention, and James leaves us free to assess the validity and persuasiveness of each. Nevertheless, the words of the Psalm have a force all their own, independent of the character who utters them, a fact of which Theo himself is well aware.

Why, one might ask, is the old Anglican prayer book in use in England in 2021, when it has been largely abandoned in the Church of England in 1993? This question leads us to one of James’ most intriguing and subtly developed themes: the uselessness of liberal theology in a time of profound crisis. Christian theological liberalism has typically discarded orthodox eschatology in favor of a mild and essentially secular meliorism. But when people are faced with the apparent extinction of the human species, the belief in moral and material progress that undergirds such meliorism becomes, to say the least, untenable. James’ story convincingly demonstrates that in such a world people will hold to a fully supernatural faith—in which hope is quite specifically a theological virtue—or they will abandon hope altogether. Extreme situations call forth extreme responses; comfortable middle-of-the-road liberalism has no claim on anyone’s attention in such a world. What remains in that case is either to hear the call of God when “again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men,” or to seek whatever passing pleasures a broken and truncated world offers.

In James’ imagined future, the truly hopeless turn to the government for the provision of those pleasures. England is ruled by a man named Xan Lyppiat (Theo Faron’s cousin), who styles himself the Warden; his job, as he understands it, is chiefly to protect his doomed subjects from boredom, discomfort, and disorder. The people of England, it seems, are ready to give the Warden absolute power in return for such benefits. Though the machinery of democracy remains more or less in place, virtually no one cares to exercise his or her voting rights. Democracy too dies in the absence of hope for the future.

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