Look at this beautiful Benjamin Boyce. What did you do to deserve such a thrill of delight as his visage elicits? Were you aware of the clean, calculated compositions his vivid imagination so abundantly begets? The effulgent luster of crisp sincerity and a harmony of complex and simple will stream from his sapience into the morbid depths and frilly shallows of each new ephemeral abyss.

Where can I find Benjamin Boyce?

Who is Benjamin Boyce?

He is your veteran guide and your techy trickster god. Enjoy his west-coast accent and charmingly floppy hair at your peril. Soon you’ll be listening to interviews with demiblanket-phobes and market socialism ultrastans. You’ll feel like extremophile krill almost roasting in an ocean vent but hungry for the magmatic minerals. As your waxen wings begin to melt you’ll wonder why you wore them when Benjamin Boyce invited you to a volcanic seafloor excursion in the first place.

Did you waste your two weeks of paid vacation? Hold on, is that Pinocchio’s dad? This is definitely going into our dear Benjamin A. Boyce’s next half-written novel. Therefore you are going into his novel. The whole miniature temporal vortex and its arbitrary relevance cut-offs? Indeed Mr. Boyce shall not elide them. And then, if you’re incredibly lucky, he will also workshop you into a beat poem.

What Does Boyce Feel Like?

Want a sense for what else may be included in that poem and novel? Benjamin invites you to experience some more Boyce. The social links at the top of this page will escort you to myriad B. B. experiences. Each is a different form of Our Ben. Some are one-dimensional: forward-moving, autocratic, locomotive rails. Some are two-dimensional: we don’t always need our own depth perception because Monsieur Boyce delivers that savoir faire. In addition, some have a time dimension. If you thought you had it good, now you have some orthogonal Benjamin as well. You’ll find it invigorating.

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14 Comments

  1. Points for using the word “visage.” I ran into this page during my listening to your latest rant. Extra crunchy. Would pair well with the wild garlic sauce we had at the restaurant this night. Just dropping you a note to let you know you make an Yuge difference for a lot of us.

  2. Wow, this really feels like that lame poetry slam a cute goth chick invited you to, because you carelessly said you like poetry…just without goth chicks and beer.

  3. Hello, Benjamin.

    Youtube often directs me to your interviews. Today’s was with Leslie Elliott. Greatly enjoyed you both.

    You mentioned Puritan origins to modern Progressive ideology. I suspect you don’t know how right you are.

    The last 15 years (most of it the last decade of my 40 years in Japan) have been spent with a projected six volume history of America called America’s Forgotten History. Four volumes are finished, which takes me up to 1932. One of several important themes running through the books is how Puritanism evolved directly into Progressivism. I’ve flown far under the radar but still have managed to sell about 70,000 books thanks to the Kindle revolution.

    Now retired back to America, I’ve spent the last two years sidetracked by our cultural crisis into pursuing a new series of three much shorter books dealing with the crisis. Two are done and up. The third will bring it home, and deals precisely with the evolution of Puritanism into Progressivism.

    I’ll copy and past the intro below. If you’re interested in more, let me know. If not, I’ll just happily continue my flight under the radar!

    Keep up the good work! And here’s the intro to Part Three of the series Good To Know But Not To Use.

    In the series introduction, I claimed the “radically transformational Puritan-Marxist substrate grafted onto itself Critical Theory, Deconstructionism, and Postmodernism” without explaining the Puritan-Marxist substrate bit. Marxist, ok. But Puritan? Well, this book, Part Three of the series, is the explanation. I don’t simply mean that the modern woke are puritanical, though that is true. I mean that the entire wokist ideological complex descends historically not just from Marxism but from Puritanism. And I suspect, though I haven’t investigated deeply enough to make the historical case, that Marxism and Puritanism themselves branch off together from an Anglo-Franco-Germanic ideological flow that included both English Puritanism and a similar Brandenburg-Prussian Pietism.
    The Marxist part of the Puritan-Marxist substrate and how it evolved into what I sometimes call the Critical Theory/Deconstructionist/Postmodern complex is explained expertly by Stephen Hicks, James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Jordan Peterson, among others. Here, we’ll look at the Puritan part.
    In my evolving studies of history, I always try to find the connections behind things that happen. Also, for the sake of easy remembering and understanding, I try to reduce the connections to generalizations. Too easy and too generalized are not good as that makes understanding subject to shallowness and twisting. But neither is too complex, which makes it easy to get lost in the weeds. In my books, I have to go at least part way into the weeds. I include easily forgotten but important subtleties and details that explicate the easily remembered connections and generalizations. But I understand that, except for those who are exceedingly focused (as I am not), subtleties and details will mostly fade from memory in a way that connections and generalizations won’t. But, when needed, the subtleties and details are always there in the books.
    One of the central connections and generalizations driving America’s Forgotten History is the continuing importance of the dispute between two foundational immigrations to America. I give all credit for this thesis to historian David Hackett Fischer. Fischer names four foundational immigrations but, in service of generalizing and simplifying, I have combined them into two. Using Fischer’s designations for the actual people involved, Puritans settled Massachusetts to seed northern culture. Cavaliers and borderers settled Virginia to seed southern culture.
    The growth and flowering of the Puritan seed into the leftist “Northern Way” up to about a century ago, though a story not often told, is actually a pretty obvious story if you pay attention to its unfolding. But I vaguely worried as I told that story in America’s Forgotten History that, once I moved into the mid-twentieth century and beyond, no one was going to believe me. Modern leftism is Puritanism? Really?
    Well, my concerns are gone. Leftism in the second decade of the twenty-first century, following the strategic vision of Lukács, Gramsci, Marcuse, and Freire, achieved cultural, intellectual, and institutional hegemony. The exhilarating power of victory infused the movement with enough confidence to express itself more authentically. That is, any latent Puritanical streak no longer needed to be suppressed. The four Puritan attributes of 1) certainty of moral superiority, 2) certainty of intellectual rightness, 3) rhetorical mastery over the agenda, and 4) internalization of an imperative to pursue activism in the cause of reformation were never suppressed. But, with victory, a fifth Puritan attribute, the desire for topdown, centralized social control, began to aggressively express itself through cancel culture, public denunciation, mob intimidation, shaming, love of rules (even while ridiculing the old rules), suspicion of free speech, condemnation of wrong-speech, and authoritarianism.
    But, you might protest, Puritanism is religious and leftism is atheistic. There may be similarities between the two. But a historical connection? The divide between fundamentalist aggressive religiosity and fundamentalist aggressive secularism is too wide and deep for a set of chance correspondences to prove some connection between the two.
    But what if Puritanism has, at its religious core, a powerful secular dimension, and leftism has, at its atheistic core, a powerful religious dimension? And what if there actually are a pair of historical isms which bridged the divide to connect the religious and the secular?
    Puritanism and leftism are, by definition, visionary, radical, and transformational, always seeking to push the envelope, always looking for that elusive missing link which will clear the way to Utopia. The intellectual ferment which that inspires means, therefore, they are always creating new labels to define themselves and their visionary and radically reformist project. Through the last decades of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries, the intellectual avant-garde leading the leftist Northern Way identified themselves with the labels Social Gospel and Christian Socialism.The religious element is obvious, built into the very labels. But, during the 1910s and twenties, the Gospel and Christian parts evaporated into thin air under the influence, shall we hypothesize, of 1) secular leftism imported from Germany, and 2) its own success in transferring the locus of good actions from Church to State, cancelling out the need for Church.
    The second hypothesis, as we’ll see, was actually a concern of worried Social Gospelers and Christian Socialists during the early parts of the twentieth century. The first hypothesis, though largely forgotten, is a crucially important part of American history. We’ll start the discussion there.

    1. To add to the discussion on this thought, I would add CS Lewis’s The History of 16th Century Literature – excluding drama. His introduction spend quite some time discussing the intermingling of Puritanism and Humanism. Ultimately you may not agree with CS Lewis (and he may not agree with your hypothesis here), but it may add to your analysis and better your own arguments.

  4. Mr. Boyce:

    Just a short note to thank you for your work and distinctive voice (boyce). I write here because I don’t really do any social media.

    I’ve listened/watched quite religiously for the last three years, ever since I belatedly stumbled on your Evergreen series. The Evergreen story eerily maps onto that of the elementary school where I’ve taught for the past twenty years, and where I guess you could think of me as a Bret Weinstein who didn’t leave, who essentially put his head down in the classroom and let them do their worst, who “survived,” although at great personal cost.

    I came to your channel for Evergreen and thoughtful critiques of Critical _________ (fill in the blank) and stayed for the exploration of gender and—what would you call it?—various reactionary movements.

    It’s a bit surreal watching instead of listening, as you happen to be the physical doppelgänger of one of my closet childhood friends.

    Anyway, your curiosity has been the key to many doors for me. And I thank you.

    Regards,
    Peter

  5. Re: Secular King Jesus in the Historical Record.
    Jesus, King of Edessa

    Boycey,

    You might find my book Jesus, King of Edessa interesting.
    (written from an Agnostic-Atheist viewpoint.)
    (cannot find your email address)

    Why is Jesus missing from the historical record? I believe Jesus was actually a 1st century secular king of Edessa in northern Syria, a king who shares many similarities with the biblical Jesus. This character was:

    The defacto King of the Jews in the 1st century
    (his mother, Queen Helena, was the defacto Queen of the Jews)
    Wore a crown of thorns (all Edessan monarchs did)
    Was called Izas Manu (ie: Jesus Em Manuel) (also Iza or Isa)
    Was converted to Judaism (as in the Council of Jerusalem)
    Belonged to the Nazarene sect
    (his mother was a Nazarene – the Talmud says so)
    Was a revolutionary (he led the Jewish Revolt)
    Would have worn a purple cloak
    Was jailed alongside revolutionaries (Josephus says so)
    Was crucified after the Revolt failed.
    Was taken down early by Josephus, and survived
    etc: etc:

    Why is this historical similitude not more widely known?

    Answer: because King Izas led a revolt against Rome, and Rome did not want you to know anything about such subversive acts. So Rome deleted the Edessan monarchy from history. They told their pet Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius, to delete them. And he did – Josephus never mentions them.

    Christianity was Roman psy-ops propaganda, crafted by Emperor Vespasian and written by Josephus Flavius. It was devised to cover up the true goals of King Izas Manu of Edessa and Judaea, and to turn him into a Rome friendly counterbalance to the Messianic Nazarene Judaism that he actually led. How delicious – the anti-Roman rebel became cast as a pro-Roman peacenik who exclaimed “render unto Caesar…”.

    I can send a review copy if you are interested.

    Cheers,
    Ralph Ellis

    A later king of Edessa, wearing the traditional crown of thorns.

    5-21-Abgarus-coin.jpg

    King Izas Manu (bar Kamza), just as described by the Talmud.
    Note the Jewish side-lock and the purple cloak
    3rd century mosaic at Huqoq
    Wrongly identified as being Alexander (a Jewish Alexander)
    the archaeologists had never read the Talmud,
    had never heard of Kamza and the Calf – the leader of the Jewish Revolt.
    Note that Jesus is ginger-haired,
    just like Ramesses the Great, Cleopatra, and Muhummad.

    6a Huqoq calf sharp.jpg

    Jesus, King of Edessa.

    Edessa cover copy.jpg

    .

  6. Hey Mr. Boyce,

    I think I’ve got some really neat things to offer for a private calmversation. A++ – I’ll tell you the trinity- I would tell you a really interesting collection of colliding worlds that have granted a rather distinct perspective for catching the arc- that is distinct enough would catch me out even here.

    A++, keep up the good work- (might have been your 50th sub)

    -Bus Driver Admirer-

  7. Hey Benjamin,

    I just watched your video series on what went down at Evergreen in 2017 and have also checked out some of your other videos and podcasts. I’m curious if you had Bret Weinstein as a professor when you were there?

    I’m an LMHC here in WA (Tacoma area) and am very interested in many of the subjects you are having conversations about. Are you still in WA state?

    1. The fact that events like that have been going on for all of human history is simply chilling. We have decent records from the French Revolution. Even better records from the Russian Revolution. But now we have video. I wonder if that’s going to make it easier or harder to pull shenanigans like this.

  8. Please address the current conversation about trans women and sorority membership.

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