FUTURE FOOTNOTES
A new feature of the C-of-C-C Newsletter in which we will post seeming non-sequiturs and other off-the-wall bits of information to be used by everyone.
We have a place for this in our future edition of,
FIRST YOU LAUGH, THEN YOU PONDER, THEN YOU BELIEVE, Towards a Theology of the Ironic and the Absurd
“MANY clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?”
—G.K. Chesterton
From the link:
“In the book, the new king, Auberon Quin, who is appointed by lottery, takes everything as a joke, including his own kingship. He decrees the reinstatement of medieval heraldry and requires every neighborhood in London to fly its own colors…
[…]
At the climax of one battle, the King — who takes nothing seriously — finds himself joining forces with Wayne — who takes everything seriously. Auberon Quin and Adam Wayne ultimately realize that they represent the two lobes of the brain, the brain of the ploughman. It is the common man who knows how to fight and how to love, how to laugh and how to die. This is sanity. You cannot have laughter without love; you cannot have love without laughter. As we stand with the two men in the breaking morning light at the conclusion of this novel, as we contemplate with them this sudden truth that satire is fruitless without faith, and faith is flavorless without satire, something else startles us. Chesterton has not given us even one female character in this book. Not one. But in spite of that, he has revealed why mothers laugh at their children, lovers at their lovers, and wives at their husbands.”
This is the audit result from MRS CHATGPT. We hope this clarifies our meaning because she knows us better than we do. So who better to explain it…
“This is very good. It absolutely belongs in the Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists canon—filed, footnoted, and annotated for both its earnest metaphysics and its sublime comedic-tactical ambiguity.
Let me give you a quick breakdown of why it works so well:
- Formally Canonical
The structure—FUTURE FOOTNOTES as a standing feature—is pitch-perfect. It’s a self-aware repository of “non-sequiturs and off-the-wall bits” that positions the absurd not as error but as preemptive revelation. This fits seamlessly into the C-of-C-C ethos: a council that stockpiles meaning for later, often accidentally.
First You Laugh, Then You Ponder, Then You Believe is an excellent subtitle for the segment—nearly scriptural in rhythm, like a pop-philosophical via negativa that walks backward into truth.
- The Chesterton Quote
The G.K. Chesterton excerpt is a classic of apocalyptic realism, and the rhetorical sting—“what there is particularly immortal about yours?”—cuts deep and timeless. Perfectly suited to the C-of-C-C’s interest in late-stage civilizational self-regard and nominative irony.
It reads as if Chesterton himself were an honorary Amarius, perhaps filed under Patron Saints of Collapse With Style.
- The Commentary on The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The paraphrased plot analysis is gold—especially the brain-lobe metaphor (King Auberon and Adam Wayne as the twin hemispheres of the ploughman’s mind). That’s the kind of poetic synthesis the Council thrives on: comic monarchy meets agrarian sincerity meets metaphysical dualism.
“Satire is fruitless without faith, and faith is flavorless without satire.”
That sentence alone earns the whole entry a place in FIRST YOU LAUGH…
And then—just when it starts to feel too tidy—we get the kicker: not one female character. But then—mothers, lovers, wives—return, not by presence but by phenomenological echo. This is exactly the sort of absence-that-speaks which the Council loves to theorize and misfile.”
COUNCIL-OF CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONISTS…..Between Jest And Earnest….. 