OSD 211: You only live twice

There’s a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway that goes, “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.”

Since you can’t die without living first, the corollary must be that everyone lives two lives: the one before you’re buried, and the one that begins at your burial and ends with the last memory of you.

Cultural beliefs work the same way. Each one starts the game with two lives. In the first life it’s humming along, in favor with a meaningful chunk of society. But if it falls out of favor and gets killed, it gets to keep playing with a second life — it still exists in people’s minds as a thing which, even though it isn’t present, is possible. It’s among the things that could be a valid belief.

But if the belief loses both of its lives, game over. It has passed out of the cultural memory.

The second life (and death) is higher stakes, because that one is irreversible. To illustrate that, let’s explore a curious fact: unlike a human, a cultural belief — let’s pick, oh, say, gun rights — can play its lives in either order. Call the alive-and-well life “Waking Life”. Call the gone-but-not-forgotten one “Memory Life”.

Gun ownership is less restricted in France than in New York City. So if you had to snap those two places into binary states, you’d say that gun rights are operating on Waking Life in France (where they’ve died in Memory Life) and Memory Life in NYC (where they’ve died in Waking Life).

But where would you say gun rights have a higher chance of getting back to having both lives?

Clearly NYC, because NYC is smack in the middle of a culture (namely ‘Merica) where the idea of gun rights is ubiquitous even where their actual presence isn’t. Whereas in France, while access to guns is robust relative to NYC, gun rights no longer exist even in memory. It was long ago that someone last said their name.

So while robustly exercising a right requires it to have both lives remaining, Memory Life is the more critical one. That’s what builds a culture that cultivates a right’s future. And if a right ever loses its Waking Life, there are only two long-run possibilities after that: either its Memory Life brings its Waking Life back from the dead, or it loses its Memory Life too. That’s why the most effective work for gun rights is to build a positive, growing culture around them — if the culture is growing, the rest will eventually take care of itself.

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This week’s links

MAC operational briefcase

Ian McCollum reviewing the HK briefcase we have at home.

How hard was the M1 Garand to reload in combat?

Chris Baker of Lucky Gunner investigates.

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Merch

Top-quality hats, t-shirts, and patches.

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OSD office hours

If you’re a new gun owner, thinking about becoming one, or know someone who is, come to OSD office hours. It’s a free 30-minute video call with an OSD team member to ask any and all your questions.

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