I usually discuss the current situation by reference to fundamental liberal concepts like freedom and equality, and try to show how those concepts come out of the modern turn away from the transcendent and toward immediate experience and formal logic, and how they naturally lead, though various forms of modernity, to what we have today. Hence—among other causes—the fuss about religion. If the problem is that men have forgotten God, then God’s the answer.
Many people, of course, are inclined to say that social trends come out of something more concrete, the material conditions of production or whatever. That view emphasizes the political rather than spiritual aspects of the situation. In the end, the difference of emphasis may not matter. Material conditions, basic concepts, and concrete ways of doing things all go together, so if you start with one part of the picture you’re likely to end by discovering the others. Still, varying the analysis checks the accuracy of what’s been said already, so it’s useful to consider the practical workings of modern technocratic society and what they lead to.
An obvious point is that the workings of the current form of society tend toward a unified system of things in which all qualitative differences become differences in individual taste, so that from a public and practical perspective everything is essentially the same and can be dealt with in the same manner:
- Urbanization, electronics and modern transportation make every person, place and thing in the world equally present to every other person, place and thing, so each finds itself in an identical setting from which none can distance itself. The identity of position and environment destroys all differences of implication and meaning, so that everything becomes an object of undifferentiated desire or aversion, or a mere resource for some other purpose.
- The whole of social life—work, education, entertainment, the mechanics of daily life, even sex and family life—thus becomes integrated into a rationalized process that treats the whole world as raw material for the efficient equal satisfaction of preferences. Since a rationalized process works better if differences as as few, well-defined and suited to its needs as possible, standardization becomes a constant theme.
Under such circumstances, the particularities of history, place and particular human relationship become confused and lose legitimate significance. “Discrimination,” the recognition of such particularities, becomes a radical sin against social morality. And the greatest threat to society becomes “fundamentalism”—recognition of an authoritative principle that can’t be reduced to the unified rationalized process that defines and constitutes the established managerial liberal order. Any such recognition is considered utterly irrational, since it rejects the exclusive rationality of the principles of the established system, and necessarily violent, since the system is thought to exhaust rationality and constitute the sole possible basis for a tolerable social order.
The great issues of social life and politics today—PC, multiculturalism, the struggle over sex and family life, the rise of the radical secularist Left, globalization and empire—all have to do with the attempt of advanced managerial liberal society to perfect itself by eradicating all traces of other forms of social organization. The Left, which includes all respectable social and moral authorities as well as all the forces of official rebellion, is an integrated part of that attempt. In our time eminent moral philosophers, law school deans, academic radicals, leading cultural institutions, and cutting edge artists work cooperatively for universal tyranny and the annihilation of the human spirit. If my description of the situation seems extreme, consider the extremism of what is considered mainstream.
So what can be done, if the forces of inhumanity are integrated with such immensely powerful tendencies of social organization? Who can rebottle the genie that eliminates every kind of distance and all particular connections, and makes it possible to treat everything—even the squeal of the protestor—as raw material for an integrated industrial process that eats up everything for the sake of rational hedonistic ends? Here, one can only observe that the new order proposes a utopia that can’t be built from the crooked timber of humanity. Man can be disordered, corrupted and killed, but he can’t be stripped down, neutered and made manageable in the way required. And somebody has to run things. Who will the guardians be, and how will they be educated and kept honest? So we don’t know just how the new order will fail, or exactly what will follow it, but fail it will. In the meantime, our task is to fight it every way we can, and keep whatever we can alive for better days.
The music & words that sang Di to her rest are now judged evil.
The hymn Princess Diana loved most is now deemed to have “racist overtones,” and its popularity is called a symptom of something “dangerous,” reminiscent of Nazism—wherefore an English bishop loudly calls for its banning.
I remember during her funeral hearing it movingly explained on TV how Diana had loved this hymn all her life since a little schoolgirl, and had arranged for it to be played at her wedding, and how those who’d known her had no doubt that this hymn, because of her love for it, had to be played at the closing of her life. It’s a beautiful, beautiful hymn and, words and music taken together, a sublime monument of our culture. Herewith below are the words (you can click to hear the music—not a great rendition, this, but you’ll recognize which hymn it is when you hear this much-simplified organ version). Does anyone reading this agree, after hearing it again at the following link and re-reading the words, that this hymn which sang Diana to her eternal rest deserves now to be banned because of “racist overtones” and something “dangerous” akin to the Nazis? Where in the world do these weird people keep digging this stuff up?
I Vow To Thee My Country.
The beautiful and sublime things by which we live; the precious cultural/religious/traditional things wherefrom we draw the strength to go through life, these people want to take away.
Let’s not let them. If the other side ban this hymn I’ll sing it. If the other side frown on it I’ll cherish it. If the other side forbid it I’ll teach it to children. If the other side cast aspersions on it I’ll love it. If the other side erase all traces of it I’ll engrave it on my heart.
We must not let these people in the smallness and meaninglessness of their own lives make our lives small and meaningless. We can and must quietly and with steadfast determination defy them. As things now stand, self-absorbed as they are they do not seem too certain that we actually exist. By our unfailing devotion to what we hold dear, let us show them who lives and breathes and who, yes, encloses a beating heart within his chest.
“Under such circumstances, the particularities of history, place and particular human relationship become confused and lose legitimate significance. ‘Discrimination,’ the recognition of such particularities, becomes a radical sin against social morality. […W]e don’t know just how the new order will fail, or exactly what will follow it, but fail it will. In the meantime, our task is to fight it every way we can, and keep whatever we can alive for better days.” (— from the log entry)