Children are hostages to fortune, and dedicating a book to one’s children is even riskier still. What if they grow up, read the book, and don’t like it? Sohrab Ahmari has not just dedicated The Unbroken Thread to his now four-year-old son Maximilian but also framed the book around him. The book’s purpose, he says, is to convey to his son the spiritual inheritance that the wider culture would once have passed down to him but no longer does.
Most risky of all, Ahmari opens the book by describing the “nightmare” of his son’s future that he is trying to avert. In this hypothetical scenario, Maximilian works for “a hedge fund or publishing house or advertising agency.” He makes good money, gets his spirituality from yoga and long-distance running, and at age 47 is “touring Europe with his girlfriend in a luxury electric RV.” This future Maximilian is a typical childless liberal meritocrat. If the real Maximilian does follow this eminently plausible life path, it will be rather awkward for Ahmari, one would think.
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