In Response To An Article Regarding The Disappearance Of Western Civilization In Education

(A part of a conversation regarding the nature and status of the West and it's ideas and ideals)

I've given a lot of thought to this idea/ideal for about the last ten years. I'll get to the heart of my point and converse directly with yours, but first I need to frame the topic in a paragraph or two.

Man cannot create nor grant universal rights. Universal rights are those things which Man possesses equally in society as well as in the presence of no one. I have thus far found only two: Life and Liberty. Being alive I possess my life, and being in Time I possess the prerogative of choosing how to spend it. There's a lot of things that we call rights that are not. Do you think that you, as a human being, have the right to vote? Go to China, see how that works for you. Do you think that you have the right to free speech? Go to Saudi Arabia and try to exercise that right.

When mankind comes into close contact, being of a like nature, we tend to interact. These interactions amount to transactions of a sort that are governed by mutually agreed upon privileges or are transactions of another sort which are used to establish privileges by which to govern future interactions. In our society we have mutually agreed that free speech is a privilege which we consciously extend to each other, hence the conversation we're having now. In our society we have mutually agreed that you and I can hold different cosmological positions and either choose to or choose not to worship in any way we each see fit. That's a privilege that we have agreed to extend to each other.

Mankind, being alive and engaging in activities, is a slave to another universal: his interests. A man's actions are and will be governed by his interests. What informs and shapes his interests? His values! Those things which he holds dear regarding what he believes is the best way to live constitute his values. When that man comes into contact with another whose interests are contrary to his own because that man doesn't hold his same set of values, the resultant transaction is either going to resemble a triumph of one set of values over the other because their was acquiescence on one side or some compromised alloy of the two.

This is what constitutes the differences between world cultures. It's not superficial qualities like skin color or language, it's values. Now we say that there is a spectrum of values that we in the West hold dear: rationalism, self-criticism, the objective search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality thereunder, freedom to think and express ideas individually, human protection from unjust harm, etc. Why. Why are those important? When entering into a transaction with someone who doesn't value these things, can you defend them? Will these things prevail or will you acquiesce to his interests which may contradict directly these values?

Can we expect future generations in the West to continue to defend and advance these values in the face of direct opposition, stated or not, if they are ignorant of how and why these values were discovered, developed, and adopted? Probably not. That's what I'm talking about when I say our culture is in decline. We're like those denizens of the science fiction theme which explores the actions of a people in possession of and dependent upon an advanced technology that their ancestors created that they now have no understanding of how it works. Something breaks the magic machine that they need to live, or it simply breaks down, and they are left in a crisis trying to fix what they don't understand. That's the world that I feel like we've allowed to grow up around us! Our society operates within constructs of ideas that most of the current population, when asked as to their composition, could not give you a coherent answer regarding what that thing means, why it's important. Ask an average college kid why freedom of speech is important as well as when, where, and why it was first realized by mankind. Ask them to cite positive examples of its accomplishments and negative examples of its use and of its censure. They can't do it! Most of them, if they endeavored to answer at all, would be trying to make something up.

The fact is that most of the West, our kids in particular, are completely unprepared to defend the values of our society in the face of contrary opinions. And yes, there are a whole host of contrary opinions, both without and some within our civilization.

An American Argument Against Socialism in Three Paragraphs

You do realize that "socialism" as you put it necessarily requires that some part of all things be held in reserve from their rightful owners for the purposes of being freely given to others according some rationale determined by those charged with their distribution. I'm fairly certain, actually, that you do realize this. That all "things" are representative of our effort, leveraged to whatever degree we can manage, has been firmly established by greater minds than mine. But to put it another way, our efforts take time which, when stripped of all of life's superfluities, is ultimately all that we have; our lives which have been granted to us and the time in which to live them. So could we fairly say then, since our lives cannot be lived outside of time, that time spent equals life spent? If so could we then go on to conclude that our lives, spent taking the time to fashion things though our efforts, are in fact the currency which is being exchanged?

Well, if that's the case, here's what your socialism sounds like to me. Your socialism requires that some part of my life be held in reserve from myself, its rightful owner, for the purposes of being given to another according to some arbitrary rationale determined by those chosen to be charged with their distribution. I've added a few choice words, but the point is, socialism seeks to manipulate the very lives of the people whom it afflicts but not those whom it benefits. In a democracy it is the ultimate device of influence generation, for no one wants to be afflicted. To say that benefits, that is to say other people's lives, are to be given out beneficently is naive. Humans being such as they are will exercise favouritism somewhere, somehow, someway. The result of this arrangement, as history has shown in the cases of various European countries who have tried this, is that society will become a small group of designated distributors, their beneficiaries who attain such status by "toeing-the-line", and everybody else whose lives are being used as currency. It's a monarchy without a king; a feudal despotism without titles of nobility; a fascism without a figurehead to bear the fasces; an insipid slave state founded upon man's pretensions; in all cases a tyranny of statism, or really just tyranny alone.

That popular governments are to administrate programs of beneficence for the relief of some part of the citizenry is not the point. Such governments who do so with the consent of the governed,---the consent of the governed!, here is puzzle piece which socialism cannot fit!,---are beyond rightful reproach. I've wrestled with the distinction between rights and privileges for beyond a decade now, and thus far I have determined that two rights exist, Mr. Jefferson labeled a third which is, in my mind, a result of the combination of the other two. In the absence of all men, within Time yet without Eternity, two things are mine: Life and Liberty. These two things should be eternally inviolate, or as we Americans have come to believe, are inalienable. Socialism, seeking to suspend the latter in order to spend the former, can be safely described as wholly un-American. That government should maintain programs directed toward the support of its citizens is without argument. That it should not compromise the core of its very existence to do so should be likewise without argument.

I'm nearly finished reading a novel within whose story arch the author editorializes at considerable length about the political and social convulsions of France and of the French in the late 18th century and the first half of the 19th. I find it truly ironic that the American progressive of today is the post-Napoleonic French monarchist of yesterday; they want all the safety, security, privilege, and fortune of the central state, wrapped in the ideals and retaining some of the institutions of La Révolution, while compromising, and as such diminishing and ultimately discarding, those very ideals in order to secure these ends.

My Best Bedlam Memory (So Far)

Everybody surrounding these two programs has a Bedlam memory or two that sticks out in their minds. Mostly for the Cowboys they're of the, "I should get a medal for coming back after what happened last year" variety. Lord knows I've heard my dad tell me about that freakin' onside kick in 1983 a million times. For some guys I work with, it's the dropped game-winner in 1988. I've had a couple of Bedlam memories through the years worth holding onto. Crammed sideways in the back seat of Marc Shook's Trans Am (maybe a Firebird) from Stillwater to Norman our freshman year, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from Moore with a full bladder, only to end the day rushing Owen Field after a 30-7 victory would be my second best.

My best memory came in 2001.

I was a senior in architecture school, and college had just about finished beating me down. Oh, and I remember trying to present a design crit at about 1:00pm on 9/11/01. The only good thing I had going for me was my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, helping me to hold onto my sanity. Barely. If you've never heard about OSU Architecture, suffice it to say that we've seen more sunrises after through-the-night charrette sessions than all the other undergrads on campus...combined! I didn't get to see many football games that year. I'd like to say it was because I was working hard on my senior design project, which is mostly true, but it really came down to what I thought was going to be the last live game I would ever stomach the heartache of living through. That year we lost to Missouri 41-38 in triple overtime (we lost to them 51-50 in double overtime my freshman year). At that point a said to heck with it, I'm never subjecting myself to that again. Well, something like that anyway.

The senior design project schedule is always broken into three sections. The second section ends the week of Thanksgiving. That's a miserable story for another time, but with the help of my girlfriend/wife, I managed to be present for a 10:00pm, Sunday plot time after a three-day all-nighter (there's really not a good term to describe staying up for multiple days in a row) so I could pull one more all-nighter before my Monday jury. That behind me I kind of coasted the rest of the week and went to see family for Thanksgiving. But, since we had that third phase to finish, I was back in the studio Friday evening. I slept in Saturday morning because the weather was miserable, and I wasn't really looking forward to hanging out at the studio alone. I made it in about mid-morning. Many hours and one near-catastrophic computer crash later Tristan, a good friend of mine who had also stayed in town over the break, came up and nearly drug me out of my chair to go get some lunch at about 3:00pm. I'm pretty sure he had only stayed in town for fear of being made to do some terrible farm labor at his grandpa's place in Woodward. Anyway, the miserable weather had begun to drizzle as we were driving back to the Architecture building when he suggested, as we were passing Joe's on Elm Street, to turn on the radio to see how badly we were getting killed. You see the Sooners were ranked No. 3 and we were 3-7 with a new coach. Sitting at the stop sign at Elm and Knoblock the radio announcer exclaimed the the Cowboys were only down 10-6 with a couple minutes until half time! Instead of making the right and driving 200 yards back to the Architecture building, Tristan turned left and drove 200 feet passed the buildings which house the Art, English, Music, and Theater departments to our favorite hangout, the Stonewall Tavern. Based upon those five little houses of academia that were all literally within crawling distance of the 'Wall, you can imagine that it was/is not your 'normal' college tavern.

Nobody was there. Well the bartender was there, but nobody else was there. It was after all Thanksgiving holiday...and 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Tristan and I remembered that there was a TV, back in the corner of the back room, against the front windows facing the street (the front door of the 'Wall is in the back) that neither of us could recall ever having been on. But $3.00 pitchers enticed us to give it a try. Lo and behold, it worked. The second half started, and we had the freshman backup in at quarterback. Great, our QB is either hurt or he was yet again having a terrible game. Regardless, time passed and we stayed in the game. With three minutes to go, we were down by 4 with the ball! A few moments later, and I had forgotten about this in light of what happened on the next play, our freshman quarterback threw an ill advised prayer to the best defensive back on the field (who is still having an all-pro NFL career). The OSU receiver came out of nowhere to cut in front of the sure interception to drag down a contested catch for a 31-yard first down...14-yards and 120 seconds to a miracle. I remember at that point looking at Tristan, and by some telepathic connection, we both had the same thought, "If we pull this off, Thanksgiving break and all, the ENTIRE student body would be back in less than two hours!"

The very next play, freshman Josh Fields hit sophomore Rashaun Woods on the left boundary of the endzone.

(T.D. Bryant was the miracle receiver on the previous play)

That's the day the OSU finally, let me say that again, finally turned the corner!

A Very Tocquevillian Thought Today

I just had a wonderful thought about the role of government in our society. I know, you're thinking to yourself that a man who can have a wonderful thought about such a thing must be either exceedingly dull or perhaps somewhat odd, but follow me anyway. Since the election of our current President, government control of things has become a central topic of conversation. What should government control, and what should it not? To what extent should government be allowed to control these things and under what Constitutional doctrine? First let me start by stating that I don't tend to view the political spectrum about the Left/Right axis when talking about the scope and power of government. Instead, it's much more useful to view the spectrum which is itself perpendicular to that of the Left/Right; the Individualist/Collectivist spectrum. Let me further state that I tend to approach this spectrum from the Individualist end being that Liberty and the security thereof, I believe, are the highest Ideals to which a man and his government can aspire.

My wonderful thought is this: Government should be allowed to control only that which is uncontrollable by smaller units of society. For instance I cannot defend myself against the aggression of a foreign power, neither can my city, nor my county or state. In this case we cooperatively agree to bestow this monopoly upon the Federal government because it is the smallest unit that can accomplish the task. Likewise with the Space Program. There are perhaps a handful of other things which require a monopoly of control, but if we are to keep ourselves from drifting too close to the collectivist end of the spectrum where individual Liberty cannot be, I think you'll agree that there aren't that many more areas that require a Federal monopoly. Does the Federal government need to control education? It didn't until 1979 and people were very well educated up to that point by their local school boards.

Let's try some controversy: How about Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? Health Care in general? Do these programs have to be administered by the Federal government? That they are administered so clearly creates a citizenry dependent upon the Federal government ahead of the State; a clear violation of the Constitution via the 10th amendment. A violation only if the State governments were singularly capable of running these programs. Is that the case? Could provisions for retirement be made and administered by the States alone? Why not? What would be the challenges? Are they insurmountable? What about Medicare? I am convinced that this program, more than any other, could become the miracle of our society if we would devolve it to the States.

What's happened is our laziness has caused us to only pursue these things at the Federal level because forging workable legislation to create and maintain them at lower levels of government might be messy. What we're left with instead is just a mess. Instead I believe what should happen is that the States together in Congress should formulate mandates instead of legislation for those things which are not best accomplished by the Federal government. Then they should leave it to the States to accomplish those things. Unfortunately for such a situation to become reality, the States, each as a whole, should be given the power to voice their concerns and opinions on behalf of themselves as States rather than an aggregate of citizens. We had that once. In fact it was written into the Constitution until the 17th Amendment wrote it out. That one act more than any other has insured that this country will not continue forever as a Republic. With it there is no longer a check against the central government overwhelming the States and turning them into merely administrative districts which are then powerless to hold back the centralisation of power in the only remaining legitimate government. Actually, since the Supreme Court is the only body that recognizes any of the States' sovereignty above that of the citizens, I think they may be all that stands between the Republic of the United States of America and the Democratic Bureaucracy of America!

Insight From Nov. 3rd

Adrian:

Arguing morality with an atheist; it's like arguing with a blind man that blue is good and yellow is bad.

Doug:

"Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt.""

-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) and advocate of Utilitarianism, perhaps the dominate normative ethical theory.

Adrian:

‎"Thou shalt not" implies that "thou shalt" anything else. To be only permitted to do that which is expressly permitable is an exceedingly restrictive, legalistic approach to life. The alternative frees us to act wither we will. Saying that a man can only walk on the sidewalk begs the question about walking in the grass. To say that man may only NOT walk in the road frees him to wander the forest path of his own volition.

Doug:

Plato would agree. And he predates Christ by about 400 years. Kant advocates for an objective good that has nothing to do with any theological commitments. Both of these are objective goods, that have nothing to do with any theological presuppositions.

Wilson:

As a non-Christian, I have to respectfully disagree with your argument. Obviously when one gets into specifics I have differing opinions, but overall I adhere to the same moral code laid out by Christians. What it all boils down to is being good to other people.

Adrian:

What then is the source of your moral code?

“I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but by it I see everything else.” -C.S. Lewis

This statement is true for any other belief system. Before you can proclaim anything to be good, you must presuppose that the thing possesses a qualitative nature to begin with, that the nature of those qualities can be identified or equated with goodness, itself a virtue of completely unidentifiable origin; unidentifiable from a deterministic standpoint anyway. What I'm saying is that to believe in good or bad, right or wrong, you're believing in something that is necessarily transcendent to our capacity to understand the world as animal creatures. The breadth of the thoughts we have, the depth and color of the feelings we feel, the pain and ecstasy infused in the passions we hold cannot be adequately explained by any system of understanding that does not include transcendency. Nothing about dominating another human being in a physical contest should make me yearn to roar victorious. Nothing about suffering the agony of the crag should make me want to write a song about the ascent. Nothing about a sunset should make me want to paint a picture. In fact, nothing outside of instinct should make me want anything apart from food, sex, and warmth.

The incorporation of belief into a person's spectrum of understanding is the light Mr. Lewis was referring to that allows us to discern the qualities of reality rather than merely the quantities. One could record tomes describing in precise quantitative measures the exact composition of the world's greatest painting and never produce a sigh; the wavelengths and meter of the world's greatest drama and never produce a tear. Without belief there is a wide swath of human experience that is inaccessible to understanding. To actually suffer from this condition would be to lobotomize your own humanity. However, most folks go on living these experiences without seeking to understand them; yet they are able to have them. They can't help it. They're human.

Really my atheist isn't blind, he just doesn't want to open his eyes.

Doug:

I understand Dr. Lewis to be saying that he sees the world through the eye of Christianity. That is not a bad thing at all, in fact it can be a rather good thing. However, it is not the only good thing. Mill would advocate on behalf of an objective good which all peoples could adhere, that is, the greatest good (measured by well-being) for the greatest number of people. And Kant would say the only good is a good will, which is measured by conformity to the categorical imperative. And Plato would point to his Form of the Good, against which all other good things participate. So to say that Lewis's good is the only good seems short sighted, given the company he has with competing conceptions of good.

Adrian:

An objective good? To that I can only ask for dry water!

I never said that it was the only good, just that to author good is beyond the prerogative of man, and that to perceive its being requires an understanding of that which is beyond the physical. Whatever that is has been left to our own discernment.

Doug:

So you agree that good does not have to be defined in terms of Christianity, as in your first post?

Adrian:

I never said that it did in my first post. You made that assumption.

Doug:

Arguing morality with an atheist; it's like arguing with a blind man that blue is good and yellow is bad. You were not refering to some sort of God, presumably the Christian God, since you then quote Lewis?

Adrian:

Your presumption. I like Lewis' statement. It's very visual and illustrative like the way I think, but its Christian-ness was not why I chose it.

I believe that good is authored by God. I believe that we've been granted the ability to make up our own minds about God. I think that's what He meant by the "...created in His own image..." part. I don't think it's acceptable for me to impune another man for not believing in God or for believing in some other god. He's exercising his "god-ness" in doing so. I can not agree with him, and I can try to convince him otherwise, but I don't have the right to pass judgement on his decision. I believe that this man may perceive goodness by virtue of his humanity, but like I said, I believe that God authored goodness and that certain things don't hold that quality.

Doug:

That sounds like a statement of faith, then, and not a statement of reason. I'm not necessarily denegrating faith, other than as reletively weak evidence for any substantive claim about the nature of the world. Does objective good exist? Some, like Plato, Kant, Moore, and others have said so, and the best support I can give for it is that if it isn't objective, then it must be subjective, and if that is the case, one conception of the good is as good as any other. Therefore, your claim that those denying God have no access to an understanding of morality cannot be true. It is only one of a number of concepts of the good, and most of them make moral claims.

Adrian:

I'm saying precisely that all good is subjective, hence the dry water. However, it is not subject to our own judgment. It's subject to its author's judgement. That certain words appear on the page, unchangeable, for me to read doesn't change the fact that their arrangement was chosen to fit the author's pleasure.

Why is charity good? Nothing in nature informs me that charity is good, yet people perceive that it is. There's no reason why charity should be good or bad. There's no reason we can determine anyway. I don't think it's possible for man to determine the reason for goodness. Many of man's greatest minds, some of whom you've mentioned, have crashed their ship upon that rock, yet the rock remains. Nobody can figure a reason for good yet everybody feels it.

Ultimately, that I lay out my clothes at night is a statement of faith. That we assume the universe will continue to work in the manner which we have always perceived it is a statement of faith. That you, Doug, are an independent being capable of receiving this correspondence rather than just a figment of my imagination is a statement of faith. For us to presume that reason alone will produce understanding is another way of lobotomizing our humanity. You may focus on developing the greatest understanding that reason can provide, but to rely on reason alone is, to me, to admit at the outset that you are satisfied with not knowing.

Doug:

Wait, if good is dependent on the author's judgement, doesn't that realize that good is subjective, since there are so many ideas of the good, and that your original premise is flawed?

Adrian:

I said that good was subjective, and that the author is transcendent. My original premise was that, without belief, there is a quality of reality that is wholly inaccessible; like the concept of color to a blind man. Not only is it inaccessible, it's un-understandable.

Two seeing people may argue the merits of the colors blue and yellow. A whole host of cultural, religious, historical, and philosophical perspectives may be brought to bear by either man to justify his opinion, but...and don't miss this...neither man can deny that blue is blue and yellow is yellow. Not only can they not deny this intrinsic quality, our perception of this quality is dependent upon the light that illuminates it. Its color cannot be seen without the light, and the color which it displays is one part of that greater shining light.

Now a blind man who can sufficiently convince another man that, because of his insightful blindness, the color of the thing matters not to the reality of what that thing really is can begin to make the argument that blue is not blue and yellow is not yellow. For him these qualities are irrelevant. He perceives what is for him the whole of the reality of the thing, and the claims of others to an imperceptible quality are superfluous. For him if blue is blue is no different than if blue is yellow. It doesn't effect his perception of the thing. Yet to those who can perceive, his blue that is yellow is completely incredulous. For him to continue to assert that blue is yellow in the company of sighted people requires that he continually petition on behalf of his assertion against the clear understanding of his fellows, and that his fellows individually cede the point that color does not matter thus diminishing their own perception. If enough cede to this diminished understanding, the color of things, while still present in the eyes of the sighted, becomes irrelevant. The color of things becomes incidental and unimportant. "The blue sky may as well be yellow, it just happens to be blue...whatever." This becomes the corporate reality, and people who adhere to the idea that color is an intrinsic and important quality of things are either mocked or marginalized for their belief in what is clearly, to the masses anyway, a random phenomenon.

So it is with all human activity. All actions have a moral quality: blue or yellow, good or bad, righteous or sinful, karmicly positive or karmicly negative, etc. For men to be convinced that this quality doesn't exist, opens the door for good being bad and bad being good as well as fueling the contempt for and marginalization of those who adhere to the understanding of morality; objective for us, subjective for God.

(I realize now having made that last statement that you and I have been engaging each other in different conversations)

Doug:

The problem I have with your original statement is that you, on a faith premise seem to privilege one understanding of good, and it happens to be the one you adhere to (I think). That seems to privilege your understanding of transcendence, if you want to go that route. Plato would also understand a good based on a transcendent understanding, but quite different from the one advanced by Christians. G.E. Moore advances a transcendent good, but claims that it is roots lie in human relationships. So, again, I wonder what privileges your particular understanding of transcendent, or what amounts to the same question that Wilson asked.

Adrian:

That's what I meant when I said that we're having two different conversations. The difference between the basis for my understanding of transcendence and somebody else's conception of transcendence is not what I'm talking about. That we have a conception of transcendence where other profess not to is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the source of the light from which believers see an aspect of reality. I'm talking about the idea that believers SEE at all, where an atheist cannot or will not, and the implications of this blindness.

Doug:

But then you still have the problem with why the atheist's conception of morality is lacking or missing, as your statement implies, because you privilege your perception over theirs.

Adrian:

I'm asserting that morality is inherently a transcendent quality, that its very existence is dependent upon deity just as color is dependent upon a source of light. An object in the absence of light has no color. It may have the potential for color, but until illuminated cannot be said to possess color. It can be touched, tasted, smelled, and even heard, but it cannot be seen. There is a potential quality possessed by the thing that cannot be perceived in the absence of light.

Our atheist would seem to fit the syllogism left unstated: The nature of all morality is fundamentally transcendent; Atheism denies the existence of transcendency, therefore an atheist cannot determine the nature of morality. That an atheist perceives morality is, I think, indicative of his own transcendence, though he chooses to ignore it. So my initial statement would seem to be flawed. The atheist is not a blind man, rather he's a seeing man who is unable to define color, though he sees it. By denying that a source of light defines an object's color, yet being able to see the color, he's left with two possible conclusions: That the color intrinsic to a thing emanates from the thing itself (Animism), or that the color of a thing is a product of his own mind and therefore not intrinsic to the thing and not necessarily of the same color to anybody else (Relativism).

Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bound To Not Succeed

"But since then [The French Revolution] the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe (and since the 1960's the West in general) has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn 'revolutionise' (sic) from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin (French revolutionary) could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but what was more important, the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus...(a)s a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist (by which he refers to Anton Chekhov, I think) will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself...A man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts (a reference to Darwinism). In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for the purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost the right to rebel against anything."

-Gilbert Keith Chesterton

What I find most remarkable about this passage is that nothing has changed in the 103 years since it was written. For fear of being found offensive to somebody or to provide justification for increasingly immoral behavior, the West has only been in a bigger hurry to rid itself of any guiding moral structure since the turn of the last century. What we are seeing now may be, and hopefully is, the last display of a terminally myopic view of reality. More and more people are coming to understand that in the absence of an ideal, change can only be destructive. But to hold an ideal, to cling to something dear not yet real, one must make a choice not to hold to some other ideal. These protesters who hold nothing dear are merely apparitions and will quickly enough evaporate away in the face of a strongly held conviction based upon a clear ideal. What will not fade so readily will be those hiding among this mass who do hold a clear conviction whose ideal depends upon support from the anarchists. Can these people possibly have in mind the best interests of anybody but themselves?

Note To Self - October 21, 2011

(Conversation relating to "Did Jesus Really Die For Our Sins?" - Piatt - Huffington Post October 18, 2011)

Me:

Quoted in the article is, "...the notion of Jesus dying for our sins did not gain traction in the Christian imagination until at least a dozen centuries after Christ's death." The article conflates the idea that somehow Christians' understanding that Christ died for our sin changed because historical Christianity held a moral influence view of atonement, which was supplanted by Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement in the Middle Ages. Yes Jesus' death on the cross is necessary to the idea of satisfaction, but it's equally essential to moral influence which would be impossible without it. What he's trying to say is that the Bishop of Canterbury "discovered" the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice in the eleventh century! We've understood that Jesus died for our sins from the beginning (1 Corinthians was written 20-ish years after the resurrection).

Chis:

...the Bishop of Canterbury "discovering" things really just fits into the history of the church. Now, before I go any further, let me say that I am no bible history buff or anything like that, so I may be talking out I the side of my mouth here. I have a bit of an issue with the bible itself. Not that it isn't the word of God as told to men, but that the church decided what books/letters/stories we were to be given. What is in the rest of the letters? What is in the Apocrypha? (I could find that out pretty easily). What about all the Pagan customs & traditions that were "adopted" to bring in the unwashed masses?

I think I may have lost the plot for what I was trying to get at to begin with here, but you might be able to find a point in there somewhere.

Me:

As far as the compilation of the Bible is concerned, I don't think people are ever going to be convinced that the result is all of God's word to man as well as His only word to man. Yes there are the Apocrypha and the unincorporated Gospels, but you must consider the quandry facing the men who assembled the Bible. It's very obvious that not all documents and ideas the are attributed to God are genuine. Jeremiah made a living out of contradicting "God's" prophets. And then there's the Gnostic gospels...some truly weird stuff there.

The pagan thing makes me chuckle every time I get to talk about it! I had a conversation with a lady last Christmas who was critical of the white Jesus depiction, and I think my point opened her eyes a little. Imagine that it's just four hours past noon and the sun is already setting because your Gaelic homeland is so far north when you see the men of you village (about 10...maybe) surrounding a travelling stranger. This stranger has come to tell you the story of the Savior of man. If he used a picture to do so, which is not out of the question being a foreign missionary, how do you think his message would be received if he depicted a Middle Eastern Jesus? These people have never, and will never see a person of color! On the Mongolian steppe, would it be out of bounds to depict an Asian Jesus? How about a black Jesus in the Congo? What's interesting about Christianity in this regard is that it is the only religious system that conforms to the cultures in which it finds itself so that the face of Christianity is myriad. You can't say that about Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism. You might say it about Buddhism, but Buddhism really isn't a "religion" per se so much as it's a philosophical worldview.