Don Colacho

“Industrialization offers only two choices: capitalism or communism. Thus excluding the old decent options.”: Dávila on Industrial Society

Never again would I worry about where I ought to live, once I saw the massive barns and granaries crumble and fall, and the wide solitary fields of my childhood covered in industrial and human filth.

Instead of industrial society it is fashionable to say consumer society, in order to avoid the problem by pretending to confront it.

Living with continuous musical sound, as in a humid atmosphere, a thick vapor of sounds, is conducive to a certain stupor, a heavy dulling of the spirit, which primes gentle souls for outrageous demands.

Prior to the industrial age, it was possible to trust in the future without being totally stupid.
But who can believe today’s prophecies, since we are yesterday’s splendid future?

The scars of industry on long-suffering soil insult the beauty of the land, and this foolish recklessness reveals hollow victory. Modern, industrial man looks upon his endeavors and is puffed up with pride. In his blind audacity, he believes he has secured a promise of infinite ascension merely because a light has briefly shone upon him. Confident in his rights, he disdains the traditional instruments of his triumph. Ashamed his spirit would ever be so humbled, he severs the true and silent source of his sap.

Only the handmade object has a soul.

In order to compel the technician to devote all attention to his work, industrial society, without disfiguring his skull, compresses his brain.

Civilization is in agony when agriculture becomes an industry and is no longer regarded as a way of life.

Don Colacho

“The lexicon of the true writer is not in any dictionary.”: Dávila on the Writer

NOTE: The Writing category has been updated with many new additions as well.

See the list of topic categories here.

The writer cannot pride himself on the successes he attains, but on the mistakes he avoids.

Simplicity attracts the writer when he learns that rhetoric can disguise his motives, but not the nature of his soul.

The opacity of a text tends to be the result of excessive trust in the intelligence of the reader.

The writer never confesses to anything except what the current trend allows.

There are certain vices of style that the writer cannot correct with new adjectives or different verbs, but only by changing his life.

Every writer comments endlessly on his brief original text.

There are never too many writers, only too many people who write.

Among unpopular writers, many do not deserve the tribute of unpopularity.

So many writers offer us their message, which turns out to be an empty envelope into which fate forgot to include any letter.

Only the word, the verbal expression, can save us from the mediocrity in which the trivial substance of our life drowns. Speaking nobly rescues us from the worst disaster. He who seeks to hide his misery or faults behind a solemn grandiloquence will soon betray his ridiculousness, but he who expresses his simple truth with crystalline purity transcends himself mysteriously.

Don Colacho

“The manifesto signed by more than three people is always just another example of some typical idiocy.”: Dávila on Ideology

See the list of topic categories here.

Ideologies are fictitious nautical charts, but they determine, in the end, against which reef one is shipwrecked. If interests move us, stupidities guide us.

Doctrines that seek to move crowds must hide from view the inevitable arbitrariness of their postulates and the inevitable instability of their conclusions.

“Raising awareness” is the modest form of indoctrination.

He who longs for “perfect communication” among individuals, their reciprocal “perfect transparency,” their mutual “perfect possession,” as a certain high priest of the left does, longs for the perfect totalitarian society.

Man, in order to govern, blindfolds himself with ideologies.

The old despotisms limited themselves to locking man up in his private life. The new type prefers he have nothing but a public life.
To control man, it is enough to politicize all his gestures.

Rhetoric does not win battles alone, but no one wins battles without it.

The pleasure with which we walk down the trail that a system opens up for us makes us forget that on either side, the forest remains intact.

Don Colacho

“Intelligence, in certain ages, must be devoted simply to restoring definitions.”: Dávila on Intelligence

See the list of topic categories here.

Intelligence must battle relentlessly against resisting what it discovers.

The intelligent man, like the artist, can only work with a limited number of themes. Each intelligence has its repertoire.

Intelligence without a costly counterpart is the rarest of gifts.

Wisdom consists in resigning oneself to the only thing possible without proclaiming it the only thing necessary.

The mediocre often adorn themselves in the external signs of genius.

Ideas are resold at all the stalls, but intelligence must be taken with you to the market.

A great intelligence ends up creating the truth of what it affirms.

Intelligence consists not in handling intelligent ideas, but in handling any idea intelligently.

An intelligence attracts us with its wit, but only seduces us with its naïveté.

Intelligence does not settle in synthesis, but in the tension of opposites.

Don Colacho

“The press always chooses what to praise with exceptionally poor taste.”: Dávila on Journalism & Mass Media

See the list of topic categories here.

The current crisis of Christianity has not been caused by science, or by history, but by the new media. Religious progressivism is the effort to adapt the Christian doctrines to the opinions sponsored by news agencies and advertising agents.

A constant flow of news invades existence today, destroying the silence and peace of humble lives, without putting an end to their tedium.

The public confession of certain ignominies only serves to muddy the waters and hide the lowest.

The media today and the modern means of communication allow the average citizen to learn about everything without understanding anything.

Every day it is easier to know what to despise: whatever the modern admires and journalism praises.

The abuse of the printing press is due to the scientific method and the expressionist aesthetic.
To the former because it allows any mediocre person to write a correct and useless monograph,
and to the latter because it legitimizes the effusions of any fool.

It is surprising that the advocates of democratic culture do not suspect what a grim future they prepare. The spectacle of the leisure activities of the current bourgeoisie and working class should make it clear that the best the future can promise is an abundance of cheap detective novels, light comedies, and sentimental films, propaganda shorts, and a plethora of lectures on popular science.

Every topic that circulates in the newspapers is debased.

Journalistic news is the modern substitute for experience.

Apart from a few lofty spirits, men’s views on contemporary events are so similar from ages to age, from day to day, that we can imagine a newspaper, written once and for all, which intelligent people would be content to read only once, but which would be published daily for everyone, with care taken only to change the names and locations each day.

The public listens only to the one who moans or the one who lies.

These days, companies are writing advertising jingles for leftist causes.

Liberalism has not fought for the freedom but for the irresponsibility of the press.

The journalist imagines he is as important as what he reports.

Don Colacho

“To have good taste is, above all, to know what ought to be rejected.”: Dávila on Judgment

See the list of topic categories here.

Intelligence does not announce itself with welcomes and affectionate gestures. Intelligence is treacherous, suspicious, and distrustful, rejects from the start, always disputes and refuses.

Whoever looks without admiration or hatred has not seen.

The modern moron is characterized by the passion with which he proclaims himself free of prejudice.

There is a wise ignorance: that which correctly selects what to ignore.

What defines modern art is its inability to adequately judge. The modern artist gives us everything. All past norms are vitiated and rotten; the artist only regards himself as an artist and does not consider the process of selection or rejection. He becomes the center of the work, and his very act of creation assumes an importance the work itself lacks. Finally, his aesthetic subjectivism rationalizes an inability to objectively define the work.

Only skepticism impedes the unceasing enthronement of idols.

Neither love nor hate indicates anything of ourselves. We can love what we are not, and hate what we are.

Nobody knows how to show us approval: vapid praise hurts us more than criticism.

A certain flexibility of the intelligence is, in some, nothing but cowardice.

It’s not hard to be skilled enough to avoid deception, but who doesn’t let himself be deceived?

Many things seem especially important, when in fact they are only more urgent.

The thought process of the individual “without prejudices” is boring.

Minds that are open to all ideas are not so much hospitable as prostituted.

Don Colacho

“We can beg for mercy. But what right to we have to demand justice?”: Dávila on Justice & Mercy

updated 10/23

See the list of topic categories here.

“Justice” is a gnostic notion. It is enough for the fallen one to reclaim his own. We Christians beg for mercy.

The word “Justice” has three meanings: legal, religious, ideological. The prestige that the formal legal meaning receives from its religious source of meaning facilitates the ideological use of the word. Thus, passionate content is poured into a legal mold and given a religious tint.

By labeling the package “justice,” for centuries it has been possible to smuggle any contraband with ease.

Don Colacho

“There are moments when the worst failing, the worst offense, the worst sin, seems to be bad manners.”: Dávila on Law & Custom

See the list of topic categories here.

“Civilizations” are those periods during which manners are a part of ethics.

The fool, seeing customs change, concludes that morality varies.

Neither a declaration of human rights, nor the proclamation of a constitution, nor an appeal to natural law, protects against the arbitrary nature of the State. The only barrier to despotism is customary law.

The “rational,” the “natural,” the “legitimate” are nothing more than what is customary. Living under a lasting political constitution, with stable customs, among enduring objects, is the only thing that allows us to believe in the legitimacy of a ruler, the rationality of customs, and in the naturalness of things.

Etiquette, ritual, restraint, are the hands that shape in the soul the animal clay of instinct.

When the democratic man gets gangrene in his finger, the only thing he can think to do is demand a law ordering the cutting off of all hands.

Don Colacho

“To love is to hover restlessly around the mystery of another.”: Dávila on Love

See the list of topic categories here.

That someone depends on us may be enough to save us.

Love is the instrument with which we perceive the unmistakable individuality of others.

When a person loves with a certain intensity, his love letters possess a kind of tension and fullness that not only raises them to a literary category, but universalizes them in such a way that despite differences of time, place, and language, the style of great love correspondence is the same.

The intimacy between a man and a woman begins with love and ends in complicity.

Parental love is the scandal of this world. It would be possible to build a coherent universe without it, but its existence reveals an unmistakable reality at the center of a universe of indifference. Calling out to God, Father, we cannot contemplate enough the enormity of the claim or the magnificence of the promise.

Each of life’s insults that are endured by our beloved only nurture our true love.

The perfections of the one we love are not fictions of love.
To love, on the contrary, means to have the privilege of perceiving those perfections invisible to the eyes of others.

Love is the act that transforms the object of love from a thing into a person.

The old despotisms limited themselves to locking man up in his private life. The new type prefers he have nothing but a public life. To control man, it is enough to politicize all his gestures.

The old despotisms limited themselves to locking man up in his private life. The new type prefers he have nothing but a public life.
To control man, it is enough to politicize all his gestures.