A little over a year ago, I shared Stephen Vizinczey's announcement that he had finished a new novel titled Three Wishes and that he was looking for a publisher for his latest work. Three things have happened since then:

1. Vizinczey provided me the honor of reading the manuscript of his latest work before it is made public. 
2. Vizinczey has decided to self-publish the novel (exactly as he did with his breakthrough masterpiece In Praise of Older Women.) Details in the video below!
3. If Only is now the official title of the novel and it should be available to the public in about two weeks! 

I will provide my own review of If Only shortly. I will also share more information and news concerning the release of If Only the moment I receive it or come across it.  

In the meantime, enjoy this interview with Vizinczey, which is part of the kickstart campaign for his new novel. The video is quintessential Vizinczey: witty, insightful, and profoud. The password is: happyfew

Over the past few weeks European leaders have been showing their game faces to the world. There has been tough talk from everyone about slowing down, or altering, or transforming the so-called refugee crisis or migrant crisis or whatever the media calls the mass destabilization event. Countless meetings have been held. Borders have tightened and slammed shut. Migrants have been stranded. Boats are apparently being turned back.

Whether this showcases serious concern by European leaders or is simply a PR exercise meant to assuage an increasingly nervous, frustrated, and fearful population, some of whom have began voting in directions other than Left, remains to be seen.

Regardless, I cannot help but think that the chaos currently seeping into the Continent - the most recent Brussels attack being just the latest devastatingly violent example - will only intensify, irrespective of what EU leaders do in the short term. I hold out hope for peace and stability in the long term, but for the next five to ten years, I believe Europe will suffer through many more atrocities.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic or narrow-minded, but I simply cannot see many possible positive outcomes for Europe in the next ten years with anything connected to the migrant crisis. The one positive outcome I can imagine would likely take more than a decade to manifest, if it ever were to. However, this positive outcome would require the destabilization to intensify as well. So in terms of peace and stability, I fear it will be bad news all around. The mass destabilization will likely continue, and as it does, it will likely intensify.

Samuel Johnson once stated that , "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." I admire Johnson, and I appreciate his acerbic wit in this statement, but I feel he does the blockheads (writers like me who have no great expectation of ever making and meaningful amount of money from their work) an injustice.

Weighing everything in terms of money is very much in vogue today, so it is only natural to judge those who spend considerable amounts of time and effort writing stories or poems that return almost nothing in terms of financial compensation as foolish or insane. As comprehensible as this view is, it entirely ignores and dismisses the more subtle and profound reasons why so many have put pen to paper.

If my primary motivation for writing had been money, I would have abandoned it decades ago. I have nothing against those who approach writing as a career - those who subscribe to writers' magazines, chase the latest trends, spend countless hours agonizing over marketing strategies, enroll in creative writing programs, attend festivals and signings to build a network of contacts, etc. I freely confess that I have done some of these things myself in the past - but try as hard as I might, I could never get too career-minded about writing and, in many ways, I feel this has been a blessing. 

What writing has given me and hopefully will continue to give me is an immense sense of contentment. It gives me contentment because it is a conduit through which I can examine and explore basic truths. I do not think I would be able to do that sincerely if my primary inspiration to write were to make it big.

I have always been and, for the most part, continue to be a mediocre Catholic at best; therefore, I am not devastated by nor surprised by the utter thrall Pope Francis espouses for all things progressive. Nevertheless, his often illogical and asanine statements and comments have worn away my patience. The history of the Catholic Church is stained with Popes who were far more deplorable than him, but when one examines some of the current Pope's proclamations - the man has his own Twitter account, bless him - one cannot help but wonder how large the gap that separates Francis from the likes of the notoriously wicked Popes like Stephen VI, who exhumed his predecessor's corpse and put it on trial, or John XII, who raped female pilgrims and drank toasts to the devil, truly is.

Whether it is relentlessly trumpeting the cause of climate change, or scolding an American presidential candidate for not being a true Christian, or claiming the current "migrant crisis" is actually an "Arab invasion" that must be passively accepted as a social fact by "grandmother" Europe so she can become a "young mother" again in order to act as some kind of mystical unifying force that will make the world a better place through increased multiculturalism, Pope Francis has repeatedly proven, to me at least, that he is not to be taken seriously. 

As I admitted earlier, I am a mediocre Catholic, so I am not terribly bothered by this poor excuse for a Pope. Nonetheless, it saddens me that in the West during times like these, times that seem to almost beg for a clear, strong, and true voice of spiritual guidance, all the Church can offer is this cassocked charlatan whose seemingly benign and uplifting rhetoric has done little more than sow the seeds of insidious destruction. In a phrase, there is no hope with this Pope. None at all.

I think in narratives. I often ponder the current macro-narrative of the world and make personal predictions and observations about the possible paths down which this macro-narrative could continue and, though many possibilities exist, I cannot help but feel that the future, whatever it brings, will be neither secular nor liberal in nature, at least not to the extent to which most have become acclimated over the past few centuries.
 
The hubris of the West knows no bounds. Having successfully trounced the traditional framework that had served as the very foundation of Western civilization, progressives and liberals (and I would confidently lump nearly all self-proclaimed conservatives in with this group) seem smugly assured that their secular/liberal matrix is not only superior to any previous societal matrix, but wholeheartedly believe that all people in the world, regardless of their culture or history, are anxiously clambering to become a part of this idealized utopian vision that could very use John Lennon's song Imagine as its national anthem.
 
This is why European progressives and liberals not only do not see, but are simply incapable of acknowledging the deeper historical and cultural ramifications of current world events. If they do see and do acknowledge the deeper historical and cultural ramifications they seem extremely assured that the paradigm they espouse will crush and convert all others it comes into contact with. I respect their nonchalance to a certain degree. After all, liberals and progressives have been extremely successful in their ambitions thus far in the West. To think otherwise would be dishonest. Nevertheless, I do not believe liberalism and progressivism will have much success in the near future - at least not in Europe.
 
Firstly, I don't feel liberalism and progressivism can conquer Islam in any meaningful way. If it had the ability to do so, it would have been far more successful in its campaign than it has been thus far, both in Europe and in Islamic countries. Its tolerant approach is backfiring horribly and no matter how hard liberals try, they fail to infect Islam with their ideology the same way they successfully infected Christianity. This does not imply that Islam is a better or stronger religion than Christianity. Quite the opposite. The reason liberalism has managed to Christianity in a more meaningful way than it has conquered Islam is, in my opinion this: Islam's strength is worldly whereas Christianity's true power resides in the other-worldly. Liberalism has not succeeded in conquering Islam, but Islam may succeed in conquering liberalism. Liberalism has gone out of its way to defend Islam as a religion of peace and lashes out consistently at anyone or anything that dares criticize the religion by affixing them with the usual liberal labels of bigotry, racism, intolerance, xenophobia and, the very specific term, Islamophobia. For its part, Islam has not returned the favor. No Imam that I know of has waded into realm of enlightenment by preaching for the acceptance of equal rights for women or tolerance of gays and lesbians. Thus if Islam continues to strengthen, and this is particularly true for Western nations that are home to sizable Muslim populations, it is entirely conceivable that liberal values such as those mentioned above might be threatened if not abolished altogether if Muslims begin to lay claim to any political power within those countries. This will also present a challenge for democracy, that cornerstone of liberalism.
 
Secondly, I don't consider liberalism a constructive ideology. Liberal principles are much better at tearing down then they are at building up. Its successful conquest of God left a massive metaphysical void that liberalism could easily be filled by hedonism and the cult of the individual, but no amount of "I gotta be me" philosophy and vulgar pleasure has been successful at truly meeting the metaphysical needs the perceived "death of God" has left behind. Stripped of everything that once defined humans as humans, liberalism has effectively created a barren landscape of barren, atomized individuals who believe in nothing and stagger through each day hoping their new granite kitchen counter tops or sex-tourism trip to Thailand will somehow fill the devastating wasteland where their souls once resided. Liberalism essentially gives no one anything more to live for than themselves and their selfish pleasures. It is an empty, suicidal ideology fill with good intentions that lead to only one place, both for the individual and for society as a whole. Left to its own devices, liberalism will simply collapse upon itself given enough time. Having said this, I very much doubt it will be given the time to do so.
 
Thirdly, it seems to me that liberals themselves are slowly becoming aware of the futility and emptiness of their ideology and what it truly stands for at its core, which is essentially nothing. Humans can survive many things, but wholehearted belief in meaninglessness does not seem to be one of them. I get the sense that people want to believe in something again - something real. For some it might be traditional notions of family or community. For others it might be nationhood or a return to religion. It could very well be a combination of all of the above. All of those things were the very cornerstones of European civilization; the very things liberalism has laid waste to for centuries. It would not be too outrageous to believe that perhaps these traditional values become the foundation of society once again, and if they were too, on a mass-scale, they would push back against both secularism and liberalism and either reduce its influence significantly or obliterate it altogether.  The nature of most reactionary movement could be organic and relatively peaceful or it could be violent and brutal, especially at the beginning.  
 
Regardless of the possibilities, when I look at where the narrative stands now, I cannot help but think that the future will be neither secular nor liberal. Whether this happens because of the possible ascendency of Islam, or the exhausted decadence of liberalism collapsing on its own, or a restoration of true traditional Western values, or a combination of some or all of the abovementioned elements remains to be seen. Regardless, one theme in the macro-narrative seems clear at this point - our secular, liberal days seem to be numbered.