What do you get when you cross Jeremiah with Cassandra? Solzhenitsyn
Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club has posted the entire text of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement speech, in which the then-exiled Russian warned the Western world that its time might be up soon if it didn’t get religion.
That’s a flip summary of Solzhenitzyn’s message–his speech is actually much more than that. It’s an indictment of many of the flaws of Western society, and when I read it just now I could only imagine how the students, faculty, and guests at that occasion almost thirty years ago received his stern and gloomy Jeremaid.
Solzhenitzyn is a strange figure, a man of a complexity that belies facile description. His speech must have been shockingly strange at the time. Today it is shocking in another way, because the first two-thirds of it–a critique of the flaws of Western society–seems shockingly familiar.
That makes him somewhat prescient; he’s both a Jeremiah and a Cassandra, although I don’t necessarily agree with his suggested solution to the problem because, paradoxically and ironically, Solzhenitzyn’s remedy–a return to religion–gives at least the appearance of resembling the remedy of the Islamicist fundamentalist jihadis.
First, a few excerpts from his speech, to give you some of its flavor:
On courage:
The Western world has lost its civil courage…Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite…
The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about…So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one’s nation must be defended in a distant country?
On politics:
A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless….
When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights…. Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually…
On the press:
The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.”…Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?….
On the consequences of the Vietnam War:
However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you.
So, what is Solzhenitzyn’s remedy? A return to the overarching influence of religion–specifically, Christianity–in Western society. He believes that godless humanism, elevating the individual above all else, and eliminating the context of a greater and transcendent meaning to human life, has led inexorably to the societal flaws he described so well in his speech.
This is where Solzhenitzyn appears to circle round to a position that resembles that of our current enemies. Because isn’t that exactly what they’re saying? Counter the flaws of the Western Enlightenment with a return to the hegemony of religion in human life?
The issues are huge, and worthy of a book, or perhaps several books. But I’m only going to briefly touch on them; this is in the nature of a quick sketch.
Solzhenitzyn falls in the tradition of Russian thought known as “Slavophile” (a personal aside: back in the late 60s when I was in college, I learned of the movement in a course entitled “Russian Intellectual History,” which I’ve written about here). His return to Russia in 1994, where he now resides, is no surprise in that context, nor is his devotion to religion.
I agree with Solzhenitzyn that some sort of higher meaning seems necessary to get us out of the trap into which we’ve fallen. But religion can be another trap, and the jihadis are perhaps the best example of where that can lead.
I have no way of knowing what Solzhenitzyn really thinks or feels. But it’s my contention that the difference between what he is advocating and what the jihadists are advocating is profound, although there is a superficial resemblance in that they both rely on religion to save us. This difference goes back to a fundamental (pardon the pun) difference between Islam and Christianity, as I understand it.
People are fond of saying that religion is the problem; it’s caused no end of trouble on earth. While that’s true, it’s also true that it’s caused no end of good on earth. That paradox is resolved by understanding that religion is a malleable tool that can be used to many purposes.
One extremely important dimension on which religions–and divisions within religions–differ greatly is on how much personal freedom they advocate. Fundamentalists in all religions lean strongly to the side of unquestioning obedience, whereas those in other wings emphasize individual freedom of choice.
Another very important difference between religions is on the dimension of whether that particular religion should be spread, and, if so, how it should be spread. Islam (which means “submission”) has historically been a religion that doesn’t shy away from the idea of forceable and coercive conversion, whereas the forceably coercive strain in Christianity (not part of its holy texts as in Islam) has now shrunk virtually to the vanishing point.
So there are differences between religions, and differences within each religion. Right now the fundamentalist, coercive, triumphalist, and violent strain of Islam is growing. Thus the special danger that this segment of Islam represents to the world, a danger that no other religion currently presents in anywhere near its numbers, strength, goals, weaponry, and aggressiveness. Fundamentalists in many religions may resemble each other in the rigidity of their obedience to the rules of their respective religions, but they don’t necessarily resemble each other in how they view the rights of the rest of the world to practice a different one.
What does mainstream Christianity have to say about freedom? To cite another famous Slavophilic Russian writer, Dostoevsky, in his remarkable work “The Grand Inquisitor,” although freedom is part of Christ’s message to the world, it has at times been subverted and undermined by Inquisitors who don’t trust humanity with freedom.
If you’ve never read “The Grand Inquisitor,” which is actually a chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, you owe it to yourself to do so. Here’s the text.
Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor doesn’t just stand for the historical figures of the past who were the actual Inquisitors. He represents all attempts by religions and belief systems–including secular ones such as Communism–to perfect humanity by denying people their freedom in the hopes of creating a better world.
I cannot believe that Solzhenitzyn, with his experience in the Russian Gulag, meant to advocate a return to a religion that denies that individual freedom. At any rate, it’s not Solzhenitzyn’s particular views that are important, it’s the questions he raises. The dilemma remains, and it’s an ancient and exceedingly important one: how to foster and protect freedom without leading to anarchy and loss of meaning, including the loss of the courage to protect ourselves?
The answer is still unclear, but the hour is getting late–much later than it was in 1978.
He still does not understand the concept of plurality or of the tension inherent in our system of “checks and balances” One of those checks is against the power of theocracies. it is Christian Fundamentalism that will eventually destroy your own political movement, which of course will not break my heart.
My feeling about Solzhenitsyn’s speech was that it was not so much about a return to religion as much as it was an entreaty to “spirituality”, or as you’ve put it, “a greater and transcendent meaning to human life”, something more than devotion just to individual desires.
His problems with materialism and consumerism reflect this. The danger to the West of insistence on individual freedoms to the exclusion of all else is what gives rise to the “me” culture, in which individuals are only concerned with themselves. Religion asks that we “love our neighbors as ourselves” and that we exhibit compassion and forgiveness, traits that the “me” culture abjures.
All in all, I think Solzhenitsyn is arguing above all else for balance between the slavish devotion to oneself and the transcendent devotion to humanity that religion espouses. It’s something that the Judaeo-Christian West used to practice—but we seem to have forgotten our roots.
It’s been a very long time since Constantine (wasn’t it?) simply declared the whole Roman Empire Christian. The basis of Christianity is a reformation of individuals and an accounting as individuals. Even those who talk about God blessing or removing blessings on the whole country don’t think in terms of a theocracy. Moral laws are not a theocracy.
Look at which groups are the most controlling and the most fundamentalist (I read a book once that defined “cult” by the nature of control rather than by doctrine, and I think they were right, but that’s not my point here.) They are small. Most often a single independant congregation. (Particularly for the true loonies.) Look at which groups are the most liberal. They are the largest denominations with the largest church governments.
Our separation of church and state wasn’t a denial of Christian laws or culture, it was a guarentee that one faction would not be given power or extra legitimacy over another faction. A *theocracy* in the United States is impossible because all of those little, fiercely fundamentalist churches wouldn’t put up with it for even a moment.
People who believe that a move to theocracy is even possible in the US either know little to nothing about denominational splintering or else had a bad experience in church and are reacting emotionally. Or else they’ve defined “theocracy” down so far that it is a meaningless term
… and maybe that’s what they think Islamic theocracy is, which would explain a lot.
I would have loved to have been there, when he delivered this speech, to watch the audience reactions. No doubt the majority of the recipients thereof thought him a man from Mars or mad. Unfortunately, his diagnosis was right, if ahead of its time. His prescription arises out of his particular extraordinary experiences and probably too the influence of the Russian Orthodox church.
As I have posted elsewhere, when the armies of Islam were stopped in their attempts to penetrate Europe, first at the Battle of Tours in 732 and then at the Siege of Vienna in 1527, Christendom was animated by its own brand of religiously-driven determination and fanaticism and it was with that fervor that Christendom confronted and stopped Islam.
Can anyone argue that Christendom still even exists today or that such religious motivation, which would provide the strength, the kind of animating fervor we need at this point to do the grim work that needs to be done, exists in any measure at all? Such religious fervor, it seems to me, arises out of an established and very strong religious base, a base which we see in wreckage all around us today; you cannot create it out of whole cloth.
I guess I believe that Solzhenitsyn’s prescription, in some form, is right after all.
In modern liberal tradition “fundamentalism” has strongly negative flavor. It is looked to be an opposite to enlightenment. But, strictly speaking, it means only unadultered faith, true to it original orthodoxy and intent. And if we belive that this orthodoxy does not contradict personal freedom and free will, if it require not blind obedience to some clerical autority, but understanding and conscious self-restraint – then it is quite possible to be a fundamentalist and an enlightened person at the same time. And I do belive that it is possible. My examples: Chesterton; Lewis; Kipling. But Solzhenitzyn and Dostoevsky are not. They are not a bit enlightened – both openly xenophobic and antisemitic. And, all Slavophilism is totally reactionary. It also is not “russian” at all by its origin: it is almost literal translation of German national-romanticism. At least, so I see it from Moscow.
“how to foster and protect freedom without leading to anarchy and loss of meaning, including the loss of the courage to protect ourselves?”
It seems to me, it is exactly the question to which Founding Fathers seek unswer. And they found: it is American Constitution. My son called it “a political Bible”. So cling to it, require understanding of it and loyality to it from everybody who apply for citesenship, defend it from all activist judges; be “fundamentalists of US Constitution”. May be, this will be sufficient.
How can you fight against an ideology except with another ideology? And how can you fight a religion except with another religion? If you don’t have a belief system, instead of believing nothing, you’ll believe anything.
I’m afraid that our public devaluation of religion, especially among the intellectually elite, has created a vacuum into which the structure and certainty of Islam might thrive. How do you muster the will to fight a determined enemy unless you have some ideal to fight for? Post-modernism removes the needle from the moral compass, leaving us twisting in the breeze.
The problem with the Islamists isn’t religion, per se. It’s the will to power, the desire to create Utopia by cleansing the earth of all uncleanliness. It’s the unwillingness to live with life’s complexities, uncertainties, and general untidiness. It’s the desire to project evil onto the Other instead of recognizing it in oneself.
In this way, the Islamists are really the latest incarnation of the ideological plagues of the 20th century. Psychologically, is there really much difference between Amadinejad, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and all of their followers?
It’s all the same will to perfect the world through bloodshed and coersion. Same spirit, different body.
Or as they say in Latin America, “Es el mismo circo con otros payasos.”
Sergey, you write well, at least as I see it here in America.
All the present comments are worthwhile.
AS for fundamentalism and religious fervor, it seems to me both are at play in the south of Lebanon. We who live elsewhere can choose our definitions of the nature of the combatants’ beliefs. And judge the nature of their morality.
These pictures do so for me (from American Thinker’s link)
http://masoret.hevre.co.il/hydepark/topic.asp?whichpage=1&topic_id=1990937
About Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor”, which neo-neocon mentioned:
Salte.com writes: “More than one commentator has noted with approval and some surprise that Laura Bush’s favorite scene in literature is the “Grand Inquisitor” portion of The Brothers Karamazov, and the playwright Tony Kushner used this remarkable tidbit as the basis for an entire play. (In it, a syrupy, conflicted Laura Bush reads Dostoevsky to dead Iraqi children and defends her husband’s policies to an angel standing nearby.)”
The play by Tony Kushner featuring Laura Bush and based on the Grand Inquisitor, can be found at the following link:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030324/kushner/4
~
If you look at the interview that Nasrallah (the Hezbulla leader) gave a few days ago, it seems that his views about what he is looking to achieve is actually quite different from what’s usually meant by “theocracy”. It’s quite an interesting interview.
It’s here:
http://www.emep.org/girisen.htm
Adam,
Does the phrase “Agitprop” ring a bell? Because that is what Tony Kushner’s “play” is.
My ill thought reaction is to the last sentence or two about advocating “a return to a religion that denies that individual freedom.” If it’s Christianity you refer to, one of us has it wrong. Churches may push conformity, but Christianity is indeed a truth that sets me free.
Troutsky, you are truely the most shallow person I have ever encountered. You dont even understand your supposed ideology, much less that of others, including Christians.
“playwright Tony Kushner used this remarkable tidbit as the basis for an entire play. (In it, a syrupy, conflicted Laura Bush reads Dostoevsky to dead Iraqi children and defends her husband’s policies to an angel standing nearby.)”
Adam, you should try to loose the hate. Its not good for the soul.
Liberals remind me of sullen teenagers. You know, the ones with the black lipstick and 20 lbs of metal stapled to their faces. Have you seen those guys? They walk around suspiciously and look at you with private grin, as if they got you and your ‘scene’ all figured out. Like they were on to some kind of previously veiled secret of how the ‘system’ really works when you can see just by looking at them, they dont have maybe a half a clue.
These are the same people who feel its their civic duty to shoplift.
When they get older, (notice I did not say “grow up”), they vote for Dennis Kucinnich.
You know how they look at us? Like sullen teenagers everywhere; They hate your guts but secretly depend on you to do the right thing for them.
And so we soldier on…
Senescentwasp: agit-prop? I’d prefer Camille Paglia’s phrase to describe Kushner’s work: self-canonizing propaganda. In the cellar of Brecht, cultivating mushrooms.
Question:
– What is the soul of the Western world nowadays?
Probably Solzhenitsyn started from this question. I for one arrived at it after reading his Harvard address.
This sounds like it is in Mark Steyn’s wheelhouse. War is an answer to the questions of what we fight for and thus who we are. If we are nothing at all, there is certainly nothing for which to fight. Perhaps we could be as comfortable in a Burka as J.Crew.
I have nothing else to add. Great post, Neo, and some very insighful responses.
The war of ideas is the main game, and we have got the team to get the job done.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/bartphiloflib.html
I could only imagine how the students, faculty, and guests at that occasion almost thirty years ago received his stern and gloomy Jeremaid.
I wasn’t there but I read the speech. I rather liked it at the time, enough so that I posted a link to it about a year ago. At the time, IIRC, the general response was that Solzhenitsyn was narrow and outdated, lacking that broad tolerance possessed by the modern day illuminati. Indeed, it was felt that he was a bit rude to so rail against the country and society that took him in. But his speech spoke to me, no doubt becuase I am a gloomy sort given to historical pessimism and a reactionary belief that there is such a thing as a degenerate culture, and consequently I thought he was basically correct in his diagnosis. He did error in judging the strength of belief to be found in the USSR and its leaders, but I think he was basically correct as to the weakness spreading through our own society.
Change is coming, where it will take us I do not know. But look how England changed in passing from the regency into the Victorian age, how opposite the accepted morals became. So there are many possibilities.
I’m not convinced Solzhenitsyn has a point.
One, he speaks of values, instead of principles. Liberals have principles– they are valid for all men. Reactionaries have values– the values of one tribe, the incompatible values of another, and so forth. If one is not a member of your tribe, what is to stop you from throwing them into the gas chamber when it is to your advantage?
Secondly, I believe Solzhenitsyn overestimates the power of the press. Yes, it is powerful, but if it was all-powerful, 50% of Americans would not correctly believe that Hussein did have unaccounted WMDs.
Third, liberals always have believed that education sends superstition and ignorance into retreat. However, our education system is failing us, teaching people to hate their own history, government, and ideals. Why give a damn about how many Supreme Court judges there are, when everything is a sham to help the man? This erosion of citizenship is a self-inflicted wound and not a consequence of a lack-of-transcendence or other babble.
Lastly, Solzhenitsyn underestimates the forces of good to make their case in a free society. Part of the problem in the United States is that Bush isn’t the sharpest tool in the box– he’s good at making cutesy cowboy talk, but he has yet to make a convincing case of why we need to be on offense against Islamofascism. This leaves a vacuum for Michael Moore-types to preach their master narrative of corporate conspiracies. A President Giuliani, I imagine, would be more effective at showing leadership in making the case for Democracy.
I think perhaps you are overemphasizing the religious angle of what Solzhenitzyn was saying, although I would need to reread it to be sure.
I think that part of Solzhenitzyn was warning against was narcissism of mankind; of the belief that the individual was the be all and end all of existence, with no restraints upon him/her behavior, and no responsibilities placed upon her/his as a citizen.
A free society does, and should, value the individual. It is a much better setup than Communism or Fascism as a cog in some huge machine of ideology.
However, there are moral limits to this freedom and to the absolute authority of an individual. When each individual considers their own wealth, comfort, peace of mind and well-being as being paramount, then the society in which he resides is doomed to destruction.
While I am sure Solzhenitzyn views religion and its guiding morality as important, I think he would cite basic morality and secular belief systems, like the US constitution, as important as well. If the West no longer believes in itself and its values, and if it no longer possesses the will to defend them, then all is lost.
The bottom line is this; Solzhenitzyn is concerned that the West, becoming decadent, denies its need for God, its need for morality, for decency, for even the basic tenets of the which the society was founded. If it basically believes in nothing anymore, even those things which made such decadence possible, then its dying. Worse, when faced with a fanatical belief system, nomatter what it is (Fascism, Islamism, etc), then its death is inevitable, by way of murder.
For more background on this, also check out Richard’s post “The Usual Suspects”, just above the Solzhenitzyn post. It discusses the absolute neccessity for will in negotiations, confrontations and conflict. The bottom line of that post is you can have all the power in the world, but it gains you nothing if you lack the will to use it.
You factor out a couple of trolls and you have a very interesting and thoughtful dialoge taking place. As has been stated all one has to do is ignore the trolls and this site has a lot to offer.
It does interest me that the ones most likely to talk about their freedom are the ones most likely to deny it to others. It also seems to follow those who talk the most about Hitler are the ones most likely to act Hitlerian.
In the final analysis it is the individual that is reponsible for actions taken, not the religion or even the tenets thereof. The individual is the one who has to subscribe to a certain set of ideas.
Dicentra says above: “I’m afraid that our public devaluation of religion, especially among the intellectually elite, has created a vacuum into which the structure and certainty of Islam might thrive.”
At first, I laughed and said “Islam filling our moral vacuum? Right, when pigs fly!”
However, in retrospect, I’ve been wondering if it could happen, though not in Dicentra’s exact terms. My thinking was more along the lines of “how does a murdering, fanatical theology conquer a Western world that is committed to freedom of self over any greater good? As soon as the mass murders begin (again) on American soil, the left will finally awake (ala Neo-Neocon) and get with the program.”
Now I’m not so sure. Islam is a theology of works. In this theology, one’s actions are your ticket to heaven. How else can an angry Mohammed Atta fly an airplane into a tower and believe he is redeeming himself?
Works are a material thing – of this world. The rapidly sinking West is engaged in its own religion of works (humanism) and all that comes with it: Sensual, material living. Under a microscope, the two (Islam and Humanism) are fundamentally the same theology: what you do is more important that what you believe.
In comparison, Christianity, in all its major variants (even the Catholic church, although many of us seem not to understand that) is a theology of faith. What you believe matters more than what you do in terms of your salvation. Of course what you do matters, but only in the context of what you believe.
You cannot work your way to heaven, but you can believe your way there. (I apologize for this horrible Cliffnotes abbreviation of Christian beliefs. Try to overlook this and catch my broader point). Therefore, a Christian can never be “good enough” to redeem himself. It takes an act of faith, a belief, that one who is good enough (Christ) can redeem the sins- for free- and will vouch for the believer at the time of judgement. That belief is supposed to drive the subsequent actions and works.
Those who perform the same actions and works, but do so in the belief that this is what saves them, have crossed into the same core theology as Islam and Humanism.
So, yes, I agree with Dicentra. I can envision a scenario where Islam conquers the west by offering salvation based on a set of black and white works instead of the more popular rainbow colored set, with the alternative being head removal for those who insist on more two colors.
This is a cat, it is brown, therefore all cats are brown and all brown things are cats.
or
This is islam, it is a religion, therefore all religion is like islam.
And to those that claim the US would, will or could fall to a fundementalist Christian theocracy, over 200 years of history call you the liar.
That is part and parcel of the teachings of the idiocracy which is built upon the accumulated degeneracies that’ve pissed their way out of europe over the last 100 years posing as philosophies.
“This is islam, it is a religion, therefore all religion is like islam.”
Sadly, that’s based on the flawed assumption that the secular enemies of the US believe all religion is like Islam.
They actually believe Islam is better, or at least far less dangerous, than Christianity, or especially Judaism.
‘that the secular enemies of the US believe all religion is like Islam..
They actually believe Islam is better, or at least far less dangerous, than Christianity..’
So what’s the future promise for such as Mike Wallace, J.Chirac and Hugo Chavez? Here’s one answer:
–excerpt–
‘Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis, the dean of American Middle East scholars, flatly predicts that Europe will be Muslim by the end of this century.
..(skip)..
Bruno Bourg-Broc, a deputy in the National Assembly and self-described committed Catholic, laments the erosion of the faith in France.
“We are a fundamentally Christian society,” he said. “The landscape is formed of churches. It’s part of our culture, our literature and painting.” Whether people want it in the constitution or not, “we were formed in this way and should not be ashamed of it.
“The doctrine of Islam is to conquer and convert, and we must keep this in mind. I don’t think there is a real risk here, but if it happens, it will be our own fault.
..(skip)..Who truly thinks that Benedict XVI is the future of Europe?” said Roy, the Islamic scholar.’
From: In Europe, Islam rises, Christianity falls
Muslims may soon become majority
July 2, 2006, Chicago Tribune
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060702/NEWS07/607020575/1009
Humanism is designed to replace God as the center of the universe with man. It is in a sense a denial of an innate longing for something greater than ourselves, something outside our own existence. The elevation of man to the highest order allows people to believe that they can define and control their own theology. We can all be gods unto ourselves.
The tendency to reduce spiritual practice to works is extremely powerful and alluring. By defining your faith by actions, you control your own destiny. You get to make the rules and then see that you abide by them. You get a checklist for salvation. You get ownership of eternity.
Based on a somewhat cursory examination of Islam, this is precisely its appeal. Your faith is defined by adherence to the code; belief can be objectified. Here is your list, now you can keep score at home. This is easy, compared to belief in grace. If there is an outside agent, as in Islam, it can be appeased by actions. Check the scorecard to see how you’re doing.
This is how Islam is designed, which is why I believe it is of man, not of God. A faith of works is possible in Christianity, but not by design. Christianity is based on a relationship with God, which you have to keep working on, just like a human one. This is not simple, nor inherently objective. And therein lies the rub.
This is the best conversation Ive found here, thanks.I just checked back and I didnt say theocracy would destroy America, I said it was a threat to be vigilant against. I am truly THE SHALLOWIST person you have EVER encountered Brad? Wow. I think it is interesting to note the number of Americans who do not believe in evolution, that is,whose fundamentalism includes believing in the literal translation of the bible.These same people are critical of the “spirituality” of those who do not share this understanding and their politics generally correspond to these “absolute truth” claims.
Troutsky needs to look at it via Eastern philosophy, from both sides of the metaphysical realms of perspective.
The crazy Japanese entertainers with their riffs out of Limbo have more ability to see both sides of the mirror than those that view religion via a jaded eye.
To look upon the true nature of a thing, one must become that thing. That cannot be accomplished when the disdain is so great it creates a gulf between.
These same people are critical of the “spirituality” of those who do not share this understanding and their politics generally correspond to these “absolute truth” claims.
Troutsky,
As someone above pointed out, your fear of “Christian Fundamentalists” is irrational (and shallow), given US history, which you apparently have not read; as is your admiration for Marxists, despite the entire history of the 20th century, which you also seem to have ignored.
Trout wrote:
“our system of “checks and balances” One of those checks is against the power of theocracies…”
Not so. Our system of checks and balances is tri-governmental and written into the Constitution. You are probably referring to the “Establishment Clause,” which is NOT one of the checks and balances. O’ you wise socialist/Marxist, you fear religion mixing with the Church, and the dire consequences it would have. How much time have you spent in Scandinavia Trout? State religion, did you know? Probably not. Finnish taxpayer’s money goes directly to the Lutheran church, and see the horrors it has wrought? So much for your notion of Predatory Christians. You give grim warnings about them, despite the fact that the most predatory and destructive “spirituality” in the last 500 years was collectivism, which has proven itself evil and which you long for.
“THE SHALLOWIST person you have EVER encountered Brad?” Yep. Unlike you, I teach at a university, I don’t just go to a nearby campus on spare weekends to trawl for vacuous undergrad girls at protests and Hugofests.
“the number of Americans who do not believe in evolution…” And what do you know of “The origin of the species” ?? What do you know of Darwin and his personal beliefs and those of his wife? Of adaptation versus organic evolution?
You are a silly, shallow superstitious man. And, as someone wrote: The modern liberal mind holds far more superstitions than the average medieval peasant.
Having read the speech, I would just like to say that the author would have really liked the Marine Corps and their value systems. The US military exemplifies how someone can live in the 21st century with advances of technology, yet be a person endlessly improving himself.
The technology does not weaken a soldier character wise, it does not make things easy for him in training. It was not designed to.
Ask yourselves this, Neo, how does people like blackfive conduct a career in the profession of soldiering and yet also be the grand support for democracy and institutions?
But it’s my contention that the difference between what he is advocating and what the jihadists are advocating is profound, although there is a superficial resemblance in that they both rely on religion to save us. This difference goes back to a fundamental (pardon the pun) difference between Islam and Christianity, as I understand it.
It’s much like the difference between Islamic Jihad and US Marines. Both are willing to die and to kill for what they believe in, but US Marines are not equivalent to Islamic Jihad in most terms of behavior.
They are not alike, even though some things imply that they should be alike.
But religion can be another trap, and the jihadis are perhaps the best example of where that can lead.
Solz isn’t talking about religion, Neo. He takes great pains to mention mostly about spirituality. Religion is only the means by which spiritualism can be achieved. The US Marine Corps and the SEALs, Delta,and Marine Recon have achieved the ultimate in spiritualism, and their goal isn’t religion at all.
This is where Solzhenitzyn appears to circle round to a position that resembles that of our current enemies. Because isn’t that exactly what they’re saying? Counter the flaws of the Western Enlightenment with a return to the hegemony of religion in human life?
There are many methods to solve a problem, most of them are sub-optimal.
Islam does offer a path to heavenly rewards by imposing discipline in mortal life. With the prayers, submission to Allah, and Islamic Jihad jazz.
However, there are other package deals that can offer the same thing via different means and different price ranges.
Get rid of religion, it’s a tool. If you want to talk about solutions, then dilineate the clear difference between what we want and how we get there. What we want is a better state in human affairs than just worship of money and materialism. We do not want to throw off the shackles of God only to be chained by the prison of our emotions, instincts, and whims.
So in a way, a person has to choose which duty he will follow. Duty to pursue money, vices, and material goods. Duty to pursue virgins and the smitting of the infidel perhaps. Or duty to something greater and purer than themselves, something longer lasting like God or the United States Constitution.
Solz doesn’t mention the military option, because the milita
Solz doesn’t mention the military option, because the military in Russia is not the US Marines. It will never be. He didn’t see that option because the last war he saw was Vietnam that the Marines fought in.
About the denial of individual freedom. It is a human paradox that sometimes you must give up what you seek in order to obtain it. In this case, the military gives up certain freedoms in order to secure freedoms for other people. Since human affairs isn’t a zero sum game, both civilian and military gain through this exchange. That’s how it should work.
When duty requires that a certain thing be, no amount of individual freedom will do anything to change that duty or requirement. As the Japanese said, death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than mountains. In some respects, duty is more important than life because without duty, life is meaningless.
Honor is acquired through accomplishing one’s duty, and one’s duty is accomplished through blood. Honor and blood so to speak are the requirements of maintaining a certain level of spiritual health. Eternal vigilance and the blood of patriots and all that for freedom.
Like any internal combustion engine, you cannot drive it on nothing. In the physical world of science, you must input energy to get out energy. You cannot get something for nothing. In life, without sacrifice and duty, all you get are the dregs of other people’s work and experiences. Nothing for yourself, because you have not given anything to earn anything back.
Brad writes:
“the number of Americans who do not believe in evolution…” And what do you know of “The origin of the species” ?? What do you know of Darwin and his personal beliefs and those of his wife? Of adaptation versus organic evolution?
The *personal* beliefs of Darwin do not matter. It’s the science he did that matters.
Newton believed in alchemy. Does that mean that, to accept Newton’s laws of motion, we have to accept alchemy as well? No.
The neoconservatives believe that they are defending the legacy of the Enlightenment as embodied in Western Civilization.
They have some explaining to do, then, as to why so much of the American public is rejecting the legacy of the Enlightenment by turning away from science and towards creationist nonsense. Science is the best legacy of the European Enlightenment.
Well, Richard, the United States has always been stuck in that ‘creationist nonsense.’ It’s part of all our Founding Documents.
And of our American ancestors. Those churches you see in every part of America weren’t put there by the European Enlightenment.
Richard, you could not be more wrong. Last point first: Science is not the “best legacy” of the Enlightenment. That would be the concept of human rights and the respect for the individual (other than the king); the concept of morality, etc. Interestingly, much of this aspect of the Enlightenment is, at least in part, biblical in origin (and many of the following were devout Christians). The most significant developments came from Decartes, Locke, Burke, Kant, Rousseau (in sort of a bassackwards way), Hume, Voltaire, Bacon, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Jefferson, et al; some of it beautiful in nature, some of it almost purely practical, some of it a bit more ominous (German Idealism in the form of Hegel et al), but all of it organic to the Enlightenment, and ALL of it judgmental and discriminatory (a fundamental aspect of the Enlightenment and Western society; i.e., some things are good and some things are not). Second in importance was technology, which is distinct from science (a concept lost on many PC neoliberals, as are most fundamental concepts). In the Lockean environment, technology flourished. And from this sprang modern science (Cartesian). Why in your view is a society, or world, that embraces both science and spirituality in the form of Christianity impossible? Are you so narrow minded that you are irritated by people who view the world differently than you do? If the two are mutually exclusive, how do you explain the fact that many of my graduate students, who are deeply religious (Christians from Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and the US), have done excellent research and published their results in highly respected scientific journals? It appears, that like Trout, you simply don’t understand the concepts.
As to the neocons belief that they are defending the Enlightenment, see above, that is what they believe they are defending, not some narrow patch of ground determined by you and those of your ilk. The tension between biblical belief (for most it is allegory) and what you, wrongly, view as Darwinism (you’re actually referring to organic evolution, which Darwin never touched on), is only a problem for mindless PC neoliberals, who believe in the perfectibility of human nature and ultimately some form of collectivistic Eden, and, therefore, reject western religion, which preaches original sin and constraint and restraint.
Your Newton argument is a strawman and not worth addressing.
Neo, this type of discussion about Christianity is exactly what I think you need to do more of — and this one is great.
Yet it is Richard (Belmont Club) which identifies the key issue:
“principally the idea that freedom divorced from some deeper purpose was possible.”
Only when one has a “meaning for life” is freedom meaningful.
For me, I see the current world as inter-related struggles of Modern (tolerant) Christianity against 3 fundamentalisms:
against Christian fundamentalists, against Secular fundamentalists, against Islamic fundamentalists.
With two more struggles:
Modern Islam vs. its fundamentalists, and Modern Communism vs. Chinese Communist fundamentalists.
The Dems who fear pro-life Christians more than head-slicing Islamic fascists (perhaps many of Neo’s friends?) seem to me to be fighting the Secular fundamentalist struggle.
Finally, one of the answers to excessive materialism should be: ending “intellectual property rights”, which act as a highly efficient “innovation tax”, as well as “information monopoly protectionism.”
— because much advertising is based on this protectionism and its promotion of meaningless, but pleasurable, sex & violence (& drugs & rock ‘n roll).
Again, there is a failure to differentiate seemingly alike, but vastly disparate conceptions. There is French Enlightment and British (Scotch) Enlightment. The first is materialistic, atheistic and partly pagan; the second – deeply Christian. Founding Fathers clearly belong to the second, mostly Protestant tradition. Leftists speaking on Enlightment usually mean its atheistic and pagan variety, conservatives – its Christian variety. There is no contradiction between Enlightment of Founding Fathers and Christianity of any denomination: they have specially designed Constitution to give all Christians common ground of basic ethical principles and norms, derived from general assumptions of this generic fight.
To Richard:
Darwinism is NOT a science – as can be seen from its name. It is ideology – and very materialistic one. There is no Einsteinism or Nielsborism – only relativity theory and quantum mechanics. All ‘isms’ are ideologies. And, as was already mentioned, Darwinism is NOT a theory of evolution, which, regretfully, today does not exist. Creationism also is not a science, it is ideology too (very sloppy, I must comment).
Is scientism an ideology, too? How about mathematicism, or chemistrism?
Woot, you can turn anything into a religion by adding three letters! At least, if you have no idea what either science actually is (or religion, for that matter).
Whatever you might label Darwinism, it doesn’t change the fact that the Theory of Evolution is, in fact, science.
To Tatterdemalian:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scientism is an ideology of science which holds that science has primacy over other interpretations of life (e.g., religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations).
More about it:
An exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation, as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities.
I happened to be born in a country where scientism was not simply an ideology, but The Only Officialy Permited Ideology (under name of “dialectical materialism”); any deviation from this Party Line was a criminal offence punishable (sometimes) by death. So I have studied it in university, twice sat for an examination in it and know it fairly well.
It is also quite popular amongst western leftists of all stripes; most famous exponents of it were SF-writers such as Isaak Azimov and Artur Clark.
Google search on “mathematicism” gave following result from “Enciclopedia Britannica”:
“mathematicism the effort to employ the formal structure and rigorous method of mathematics as a model for the conduct of philosophy”. So, it is also an ideology.
Find what “chemicism” means I leave to you to improve your information retrival skills.
Incidentally, speciation was theme of my Ph.D. thesis. I also publised a book on this, but still I have not time to translate it into English, so the text exists in Internet only in Russian. Of course, evolution is a scientific fact, really a huge mountain of facts, but there still is no coherent explanation to these facts – only empirical rules known to paleontologists, but driving mechanisms behind these rules are mystery cloacked in secret shrouded by enigma…
In addition to what Sergey just wrote, I want to clarify my point about “organic evolution.” In biology jargon this refers to the evolution of organic moleculdes (e.g., amino acids, bases) form primordial soup, and the progression towards polymers (proteins, RNA). That is why Darwin never touched on it: they didn’t know enough biochem to even speculate. But that is the bone of contention when people argue about Darwin vs religion, and non-scientist PC neoliberals (i.e., anti-christians) think that somehow Darwin dealt with the origin of life, when he only dealt with the origin of species.
Sergey, you were correct about not seperately discussing the continental enlightenment vs british/scottish. I was going to make the distinction (hence the qualifier after Rousseau’s name), but neglected to.
There is a problem with the word “fundamentalism”, in that it has become a strictly pejorative term. A fundamentalist is someone who strives to return to the fundamentals, or the roots of religion. All jihadists may be fundamentalists, but all fundamentalists are not jihadists. The same distinction can be made for Christian fundamentalism, especially as seen in the Evangelical movement.
In order for the parallel between jihadists and the “religious right” to work, you would need multiple examples of militant Christianity, coupled with an overarching goal of bringing down some or all of the structures of modern society. Individual idiots who bomb abortion clinics do not have a strategy, and groups within the pro-life movement do not intend to destroy society in order to rebuild it.
I am a scientist, and I consider myself something of a fundamentalist, since I believe in the Bible (the hard part is determining what is meant to be taken literally, and what is allegorical) explicitly. My faith is not threatened by my belief in science, or vice versa.
We discussed this before.
It is certainly true that people who believe that radical solutions or the application of force can solve systemic problems are setting the stage for immeasurable suffering and loss of life. That’s what the 20th Century in Europe was all about, and, to some extent, how the WOT has been conducted as well.
In the religious context, a key term is “humility”: if you do not accept your ability to “change everything for the better” then you are less likely to implement radical solutions. But another part of the question, from the religious POV, is how much material improvement is enough, i.e., is material comfort the reason we are alive? Not to put too fine a point on it, the trend in our civilization has moved almost entirely to the “purpose of life” being the acquisition of wealth, power, and things; which, if you think about it for two minutes is an endless and ultimately fruitless treadmill, and therefore a waste of time.
If, for the sake of an example, we had a civilization that saw progress in the elevation of mind and spirit, and charity towards others, as the greatest good, which was humble, not arrogant, and not greedy, we would be having the kind of civilization that both Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn idealized. Of course there never has been such a society …..
We are following a typical curve for civilizations that succeed in solving the problems of material want. As material needs and human tragedies from want vaporize, the need for either religion or a selflessness that comes from that also dissipates. We become hyper-individualized, and forget that our individuality doesn’t really amount to much. For this reason, we lose our taste for sacrifice, because “it’s about us”, and we lose any reason to restrain our wants and appetites.
There is no question that the prevailing ideology in the US, Europe, and perhaps other countries as well, has become so self-centered and so “what’s in it for me” that such nations never would have been able to successfully fight, let alone win, either of the World Wars or our American Civil War.
In a way, that’s good, because it ensures we have no appetite for war. But it also means that we have lost the appetite to give up our lives for our way of life or our civilization, preferring, when fighting is necessary, to do it remotely by air (which doesn’t work), or even to conjure fantastic scenarios of distant, and therefore theoretically safe for us, nuclear detonations.
Neither the one nor the other will save us. It’s not a question of our willingness to kill others. There’s indeed a great willingness to do that, or see it done (read the blogosphere.) There is a lack of willingness to give it all up, all of it, for our common culture, and unless we recapture that — and it can’t be recaptured by force, and maybe not even by rhetoric — we are toast. Simple as that.
Steve–I think it may go beyond that. Right now we are being defended by troops who, in large measure, come from the Scotch-Irish cultures of the South. This combative and religiously conservative culture, I would think, is seeing those ideals and institutions it believes in being slowly, sometimes not so slowly, destroyed. Thus, there is less and less worthwhile to defend. At some point, this stream of willing and very effective recruits is going to dry up and the kind of military we will have then may increasingly resemble the French foreign legion. Not a good thing.