The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #17
Looking at these great works of western man and remembering all that he has achieved in philosophy, poetry, science, law making...it does seem hard to believe that European Civilisation can ever vanish. And yet, you know, it has happened once. All the life-giving human activities that we lump together under the word Civilisation have been obliterated once in Western Europe, when the Barbarians ran over the Roman Empire. For two centuries the heart of European Civilisation almost stopped beating.
We got through by the skin of our teeth. In the last few years we have developed an uneasy feeling that this could happen again. And advanced thinkers, who, even in Roman times, thought it fine to gang up with the Barbarians, have begun to question if civilisation is worth preserving...I don't think that civilisation will disappear as long as we believe in it. But it will if we don't. -From Lord Clark's notes for Civilisation; 1968. (Available on DVD; go to bbcamericashop.com)
In the visually striking and endlessly fascinating BBC program Civilisation, Lord Kenneth Clark begins by quoting the nineteenth century English art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, who observed that "great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: The book of their deeds; the book of their words; and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others. But, of the three, the only trustworthy one is the last."
One might well wonder what the study of art has to do with historical studies. If we incline to the not unreasonable perception that history is, to a great extent, philosophy teaching by example. And if we further entertain the view that philosophy is very much the means by which humans search for and recognize truth, goodness and beauty- that is, things that are made well- then I think history and art share a most relevant affinity. Accordingly, art is much more than merely ornamentation; it is the physical expression and the enduring record of a culture's highest ideals.
Lord Clark, the distinguished Oxford educated art historian, offers valuable insights well worth the consideration of a citizenry whose highest ideal is FREEDOM. He remarks that the incredible saga of the destruction of Western culture that was the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, "does tell one something about the nature of civilisation: it shows that however complex and solid it seems, civilisation is actually quite fragile- it can be destroyed."
What are the enemies of civilization? "First of all, fear. Fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague. Fears that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things or planting trees, or even planning next year's crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren't question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions that destroyed self-confidence."
Americans can certainly comprehend such fear today, as we risk war with Iran, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, North Korea, in South America, off the coast of Somalia, in Afghanistan, in Iraq or the Persian Gulf. We are in constant fear of homeland invasion by the drug cartels and our domestic gangs distributing their poison into our inner cities and suburbs; and through terrorist attack by radical Islamic elements and "sleeper cells", as the recent slaughter at Fort Hood made us painfully aware.
We fear war in our schools, war in our churches and shopping malls, war in our marriages. We fear for our children and loved ones because of the war declared against them according to the blind rage of strangers, and the cruel wickedness of sexual predators, pedophiles and serial killers. And sadly, because essentially we are a community of souls each with a conscience, we fear most profoundly as we war daily against our God and the Son He lovingly sent.
We in America fear also pandemic, contagion and plague, whether swine flu from Mexico or bird flu from China and their various mutations. Widespread jet travel and burgeoning global commerce delivers from the most distant areas of the world disease, as well as products, into our midst. We fear the contamination of our water and food supplies, and we fear pollution and environmental degradation. And still, the memory of the fourteenth century Black Death lingers in the Western consciousness, as nearly 50% of Europe's population perished in a matter of twenty years.
"And then...boredom. A feeling of hopelessness, which can overtake people with a high degree of material prosperity...Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity. Enough to provide a little leisure. But far more, it requires confidence. Confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, confidence in one's own mental powers."
Filling much of the background of Lord Clark's immediate presentation looms an imposing bridge and aqueduct system built by Roman engineers, when the current location- Nimes, France- formerly was the Roman province of Gaul. This impressive structure, continued Lord Clark, "is not only a triumph of technical skill, but it shows a vigorous belief in discipline and law. Energy, vitality- all the great civilisations or civilising epochs, have had a weight of energy behind them...So, if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted..."
It is entirely instructive to our own society therefore, to view from our modern vantage the cultural exhaustion experienced in Classical civilization, as it was emptied of its energy and vitality- its life force, and the ultimate depletion of the people's confidence in its laws, philosophy, society and especially their mental powers.
It is equally useful to note those things that survived the fall of Rome- which enabled us to get through "by the skin of our teeth"- and which gave impetus to the next European Civilization; one that was destined to flourish as an Atlantic Civilization rather than Mediterranean. What survived and eventually prospered in the hands of Western man is revealed in the life's work of two prominent citizens of Carthage, the Capital City of the Roman province of Africa.
Mindful of the horrific destruction of Rome, Martianus Capella- a Roman proconsul in Carthage, and Aurelius Augustinus- that is, Augustine, a Christian clergyman in that same city, dedicated themselves to the task of preserving some semblance of their culture. With the certain approach of the fearsome Vandals, who were storming across the Straits of Gibraltar to put an end to Roman rule in Africa, both men set to work composing a most unique literary legacy.
Capella produced in nine volumes the imperial school curriculum, the trivium and quadrivium as they came to be called, which were intended as "condensed forms of Roman knowledge" to help the survivors of a soon-to-be fragmented and largely diminished Roman Empire. Augustine composed an extraordinary book entitled The City of God, forming the basis of which was the Credo ut intelligam (understanding comes only through belief), which would "see the monasteries through the Dark Ages that lay ahead."
Forming what were known as the seven liberal arts- rhetoric, grammar, argument, music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy- Capella accompanied these subjects with an encyclopedic supplement consisting of facts germane to these areas of study. According to James Burke, Martianus Capella's "work was to become standard reference for education for the next six centuries."
Augustine's City of God "was to influence Christian thinking for a thousand years." Indeed, his devout faith in the Bible as God's revealed truth to humanity rendered "a decisive influence on the development of metaphysics by introducing the identification of God and Being...If God is Being, He is not only total being: totum esse, but, as we have seen, He is more especially true being: verum esse..." (Etienne Gilson; The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy).
In the absence of this insight, Greek thought- as innovative and remarkably effective as it is- was not able in its day to erect a viable science. And in the departure from such insight today, modern science- as unquestionably powerful and enormously productive as it is- unavoidably lapses into error and inevitably leads human reason astray.
On the political level, the energy Augustine's work contributed to the eventual formation of democracy and human FREEDOM in Western Civilization was promoted through its preservation of that continuity of existence (ontology) and thought (epistemology) that began in Jerusalem, and spread to Athens, Rome, London and Philadelphia: the "tale of five cities" about which Professor Russell Kirk wrote in The Roots of American Order.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #16
Much is spoken today about the power of science, and rightly. It is awesome. But little is said about the inherent limitations of science, and both sides of the coin need equal scrutiny. –Vannevar Bush
One of the severest tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of scientific methods. –James Clerk Maxwell
-Both quotes are from The Relevance of Physics; Stanley L. Jaki (Benedictine monk; Ph D, Physics; Visiting member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study); University of Chicago Press; 1966. Preface.
It is a curious and revealing misperception of our modern age that a secularized intellectual climate was essential for modern science to emerge and flourish. To provide for this climate, it was necessary for the humanism of the Renaissance (the rebirth) to prepare the way for the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment, which would give rise to the subsequent Industrial Revolution; all of which was accomplished despite the oppressive intellectual orthodoxy the medieval Church struggled to maintain.
Accordingly, naturalistic theories of physical phenomena came to supplant Aristotle’s Physics and supernatural explanations of the universe and its processes. The implication being that Christianity is not only incompatible with the free use of reason and the naturalistic observations of science, but an actual impediment to these. Ultimately, modern science has come to represent an unprejudiced, objective, positive and certain endeavor.
Of course, the historical record presents a vastly different picture. Nearly fifty years after Rome was sacked (476 A.D.) by Visigoth and Hun barbarians and almost a century before the appearance of Islam (622 A.D.), the Order of Benedict built its monastery- one of many throughout Western Europe- on Monte Cassino in 529 A.D., near the road from Naples to Rome.
In addition to their reputation for piety, the Benedictines were known for their encouragement of learning and their fidelity to the preservation of the sum of Western literature and knowledge. Most, if not all, of the books circulated in Western Europe before Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing process and technology in the mid-fifteenth century (1450 A.D.), were skillfully produced by Benedictine monks.
Of equal importance were the numerous original Greek New Testament manuscripts that were faithfully, painstakingly preserved, copied and translated by the Benedictines in their humble monasteries. Such dedication to the preservation and dissemination of Western knowledge would prove crucial to the rise in the West of the University (originally a uniquely Western institution), and scientific, social, intellectual and political FREEDOM, as we shall soon see…
Journal Entry #16
Much is spoken today about the power of science, and rightly. It is awesome. But little is said about the inherent limitations of science, and both sides of the coin need equal scrutiny. –Vannevar Bush
One of the severest tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of scientific methods. –James Clerk Maxwell
-Both quotes are from The Relevance of Physics; Stanley L. Jaki (Benedictine monk; Ph D, Physics; Visiting member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study); University of Chicago Press; 1966. Preface.
It is a curious and revealing misperception of our modern age that a secularized intellectual climate was essential for modern science to emerge and flourish. To provide for this climate, it was necessary for the humanism of the Renaissance (the rebirth) to prepare the way for the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment, which would give rise to the subsequent Industrial Revolution; all of which was accomplished despite the oppressive intellectual orthodoxy the medieval Church struggled to maintain.
Accordingly, naturalistic theories of physical phenomena came to supplant Aristotle’s Physics and supernatural explanations of the universe and its processes. The implication being that Christianity is not only incompatible with the free use of reason and the naturalistic observations of science, but an actual impediment to these. Ultimately, modern science has come to represent an unprejudiced, objective, positive and certain endeavor.
Of course, the historical record presents a vastly different picture. Nearly fifty years after Rome was sacked (476 A.D.) by Visigoth and Hun barbarians and almost a century before the appearance of Islam (622 A.D.), the Order of Benedict built its monastery- one of many throughout Western Europe- on Monte Cassino in 529 A.D., near the road from Naples to Rome.
In addition to their reputation for piety, the Benedictines were known for their encouragement of learning and their fidelity to the preservation of the sum of Western literature and knowledge. Most, if not all, of the books circulated in Western Europe before Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing process and technology in the mid-fifteenth century (1450 A.D.), were skillfully produced by Benedictine monks.
Of equal importance were the numerous original Greek New Testament manuscripts that were faithfully, painstakingly preserved, copied and translated by the Benedictines in their humble monasteries. Such dedication to the preservation and dissemination of Western knowledge would prove crucial to the rise in the West of the University (originally a uniquely Western institution), and scientific, social, intellectual and political FREEDOM, as we shall soon see…
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #15
Democratic institutions require that citizens think for themselves…and decide issues on the basis of deliberation and the weighing of evidence. – Irving M. Copi; Introduction to Logic; Sixth Edition; Preface.
We concluded the previous journal entry with a crucial question based upon James Burke’s insightful explanation of the historical formation of Western knowledge, presented in his acclaimed book The Day The Universe Changed.
Insofar as our knowledge is formed by the accumulation of empirical evidence (that gained from external experience and observation) it becomes of crucial importance that we avoid the pitfalls of erroneous thinking and the wrong interpretation of the evidence. Such is essential to the integrity and reliability of the reasoning process generally, and to the scientific method particularly.
Mr. Burke tells us that the ‘knowledge’ we possess structures quite literally everything we subsequently do and think- “architecture, music, literature, science, economics, art, politics”- because it tells us the truth. Over time, however, as a result of scientific discovery or technological advancement the widely accepted truth changes and with it, what is ‘known’ about the universe.
As understanding of the universe and of earth advanced and new truths were discovered- which affected our ‘knowledge’- the question arose whether it was possible for the intellect to declare something true that really is not? Is such a thing conceivable in the context of our modern notion of intellectual progress, achieved through the positive methods of a vigorously advancing science?
We do not refer here to the occasional lapse in thinking, which is quite common, easily recognized and soon corrected. Rather, we are concerned with the “latest version of how the universe functions.” And whether, as we observe nature, “like the people of the past…we see what we want to see, according to what we believe we know about it at the time.” That is to say, by means of a preconceived notion or view about nature, man and God we determine prematurely what is real and what is not: “Like our ancestors, we know the real truth.”
The answer to our crucial question is most definitely yes, the possibility exists of an ill-conceived and erroneously established ‘truth’ in Western thought. The wrongly established truth that has gained dominance and subsequently misdirected modern thought goes by the name of materialism, which simply is defined as the tendency to regard the material world as the ultimate reality.
Originally, the philosophical tendency that emerged in the Renaissance to look to more naturalistic explanations to describe and understand nature and mankind, was greatly enhanced by the perspective that said “all the measurable objects of the universe are material objects”. Gaining ever greater prestige and authority by the time of the European Enlightenment, this perspective was enlarged to state that “all the objects of the universe are material objects”.
The latest version of truth about the universe by which we now live got its systematic start in 1687, with the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. In it were enunciated his differential and integral calculus- for measuring inertia and gravitational force involved in planetary dynamics- as well as his formulation of the theory of universal gravitation.
In essence, Isaac Newton’s Principia “gave rise to a mechanical philosophy in which nature was conceived as a law-bound system of matter in motion, every state of the system proceeding from previous states by mathematical rule” according to Professor John Greene, in Darwin and The Modern World View.
James Burke observes that with the advent of Newtonian science, “the theory of universal gravity…destroyed the medieval picture of the world as a structure moved by the unseen but ever-present hand of God…There seemed, for the first time, no place in the cosmos for the providential involvement of God in the affairs of mankind.”
Today all human thought and behavior, along with every object and process in nature is reduced to a materialist view of the universe, something we term reductionism. It’s not the case that science declares only material objects necessarily exist; but certainly that only matter and its various processes, interactions and associations have any relevance and bearing on our physical realm.
It is here that our crucial- indeed, essential question enters into our discussion. Should science revisit and reconsider a strictly materialist perspective, in the possibility that it might be wrong? Or, does science consider itself above error? Further, because science hasn’t yet asked this question about its conclusions, and therefore has imposed no order upon its method, are we justified in saying that science operates arbitrarily?
And how would science reconcile its conclusions with the decidedly nonmaterial statement from the Protestant Reformation which asserted that “Christianity is the immortal seed of freedom of the world”.
Journal Entry #15
Democratic institutions require that citizens think for themselves…and decide issues on the basis of deliberation and the weighing of evidence. – Irving M. Copi; Introduction to Logic; Sixth Edition; Preface.
We concluded the previous journal entry with a crucial question based upon James Burke’s insightful explanation of the historical formation of Western knowledge, presented in his acclaimed book The Day The Universe Changed.
Insofar as our knowledge is formed by the accumulation of empirical evidence (that gained from external experience and observation) it becomes of crucial importance that we avoid the pitfalls of erroneous thinking and the wrong interpretation of the evidence. Such is essential to the integrity and reliability of the reasoning process generally, and to the scientific method particularly.
Mr. Burke tells us that the ‘knowledge’ we possess structures quite literally everything we subsequently do and think- “architecture, music, literature, science, economics, art, politics”- because it tells us the truth. Over time, however, as a result of scientific discovery or technological advancement the widely accepted truth changes and with it, what is ‘known’ about the universe.
As understanding of the universe and of earth advanced and new truths were discovered- which affected our ‘knowledge’- the question arose whether it was possible for the intellect to declare something true that really is not? Is such a thing conceivable in the context of our modern notion of intellectual progress, achieved through the positive methods of a vigorously advancing science?
We do not refer here to the occasional lapse in thinking, which is quite common, easily recognized and soon corrected. Rather, we are concerned with the “latest version of how the universe functions.” And whether, as we observe nature, “like the people of the past…we see what we want to see, according to what we believe we know about it at the time.” That is to say, by means of a preconceived notion or view about nature, man and God we determine prematurely what is real and what is not: “Like our ancestors, we know the real truth.”
The answer to our crucial question is most definitely yes, the possibility exists of an ill-conceived and erroneously established ‘truth’ in Western thought. The wrongly established truth that has gained dominance and subsequently misdirected modern thought goes by the name of materialism, which simply is defined as the tendency to regard the material world as the ultimate reality.
Originally, the philosophical tendency that emerged in the Renaissance to look to more naturalistic explanations to describe and understand nature and mankind, was greatly enhanced by the perspective that said “all the measurable objects of the universe are material objects”. Gaining ever greater prestige and authority by the time of the European Enlightenment, this perspective was enlarged to state that “all the objects of the universe are material objects”.
The latest version of truth about the universe by which we now live got its systematic start in 1687, with the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. In it were enunciated his differential and integral calculus- for measuring inertia and gravitational force involved in planetary dynamics- as well as his formulation of the theory of universal gravitation.
In essence, Isaac Newton’s Principia “gave rise to a mechanical philosophy in which nature was conceived as a law-bound system of matter in motion, every state of the system proceeding from previous states by mathematical rule” according to Professor John Greene, in Darwin and The Modern World View.
James Burke observes that with the advent of Newtonian science, “the theory of universal gravity…destroyed the medieval picture of the world as a structure moved by the unseen but ever-present hand of God…There seemed, for the first time, no place in the cosmos for the providential involvement of God in the affairs of mankind.”
Today all human thought and behavior, along with every object and process in nature is reduced to a materialist view of the universe, something we term reductionism. It’s not the case that science declares only material objects necessarily exist; but certainly that only matter and its various processes, interactions and associations have any relevance and bearing on our physical realm.
It is here that our crucial- indeed, essential question enters into our discussion. Should science revisit and reconsider a strictly materialist perspective, in the possibility that it might be wrong? Or, does science consider itself above error? Further, because science hasn’t yet asked this question about its conclusions, and therefore has imposed no order upon its method, are we justified in saying that science operates arbitrarily?
And how would science reconcile its conclusions with the decidedly nonmaterial statement from the Protestant Reformation which asserted that “Christianity is the immortal seed of freedom of the world”.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #14
You are what you know. Fifteenth-century Europeans ‘knew’ that the sky was made of closed concentric crystal spheres, rotating around a central earth and carrying the stars and planets. That ‘knowledge’ structured everything they did and thought, because it told them the truth. Then Galileo’s telescope changed the truth.
As a result, a hundred years later everybody ‘knew’ that the universe was open and infinite, working like a giant clock. Architecture, music, literature, science, economics, art, politics- everything- changed, mirroring the new view created by the change in the knowledge.
Today we live according to the latest version of how the universe functions. This view affects our behaviour and thought, just as previous versions affected those who lived with them. Like the people of the past, we disregard phenomena which do not fit our view because they are ‘wrong’ or outdated. Like our ancestors, we know the real truth…
Somebody once observed to the eminent philosopher Wittgenstein how stupid medieval Europeans living before the time of Copernicus must have been that they could have looked at the sky and thought that the sun was circling the earth. Surely a modicum of astronomical good sense would have told them that the reverse was true. Wittgenstein is said to have replied: ‘I agree. But I wonder what it would have looked like if the sun had been circling the earth.’
The point is that it would look exactly the same. When we observe nature we see what we want to see, according to what we believe we know about it at the time. Nature is disordered, powerful and chaotic, and through fear of the chaos we impose system on it…We need to have an overall explanation of what the universe is and how it functions…we develop explanatory theories which will give structure to natural phenomena: we classify nature into a coherent system which appears to do what we say it does.
This view of the universe permeates all aspects of our life. All communities in all places at all times manifest their own view of reality in what they do. The entire culture reflects the contemporary model of reality. We are what we know. And when the body of knowledge changes, so do we. – James Burke, Preface and Chapter 1, “The Way We Are”, 1985; The Day The Universe Changed
With keen insight and unadorned eloquence James Burke- the esteemed historian of science, technology and innovation- has at once provided the reader a basic understanding of human thought as the dynamic of history, together with a secure footing upon which to analyze and appraise the subsequent philosophical threat now confronting Western Civilization, and American FREEDOM particularly.
As we proceed, we are once again reminded of the gist of my thesis, generally reflected throughout this journal: Without intellectual FREEDOM, there can be no societal FREEDOM, economic FREEDOM nor political FREEDOM. That free institutions and a stable society will become impossible to maintain as FREEDOM of thought is diminished. And that this very situation, this diminution of intellectual FREEDOM, is now at work in our country and in our civilization by our own choice and effort- not by government decree, as many would claim.
James Burke’s award-winning book and PBS television series, The Day The Universe Changed, interestingly observes the human tendency in history to formulate explanations about the content and operation of the natural world, according to what is already ‘known’. This ‘knowledge’ serves to structure everything that is done and thought in society, because it conveys the truth.
With a change in the truth comes a change in ‘knowledge’. For example, when Galileo’s telescope revealed in 1609 and 1610 the satellites circling Jupiter and the imperfections and irregularities of the moon’s surface, the ‘knowledge’ of an earth-centered universe and perfect planetary spheres began to change. And with the change in knowledge came a change in architecture, music, literature, art, science, economics and politics- that is, in civilization.
In the roughly two centuries that separated the naturalist John Ray’s (a member in the Royal Society with Isaac Newton) The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), and the naturalist Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), the truth of God’s static creation increasingly gave way to naturalism and evolutionary views of nature.
As Benjamin Wiker aptly describes it in his book The Darwin Myth, “We entered the nineteenth century with Christian assumptions for the most part intact: that we were fallen but redeemable creatures made in the image of God. We exited in a Godless cosmos, as mere animals who had managed, through much luck and struggle, to climb from unimaginably low origins to a little above the apes.”
Professor John C. Greene perceptively observes in his book The Death of Adam; Evolution And Its Impact On Western Thought; “As faith in the stability and wise design of the structures of nature declined, there was a compensating effort to find in the idea of progress a new world view which would give meaning to science and direction to human history.”
The question we need to ask ourselves is whether it is possible that a change in the truth- which directly affects what we ‘know’- can be ill-conceived and erroneously established?
Journal Entry #14
You are what you know. Fifteenth-century Europeans ‘knew’ that the sky was made of closed concentric crystal spheres, rotating around a central earth and carrying the stars and planets. That ‘knowledge’ structured everything they did and thought, because it told them the truth. Then Galileo’s telescope changed the truth.
As a result, a hundred years later everybody ‘knew’ that the universe was open and infinite, working like a giant clock. Architecture, music, literature, science, economics, art, politics- everything- changed, mirroring the new view created by the change in the knowledge.
Today we live according to the latest version of how the universe functions. This view affects our behaviour and thought, just as previous versions affected those who lived with them. Like the people of the past, we disregard phenomena which do not fit our view because they are ‘wrong’ or outdated. Like our ancestors, we know the real truth…
Somebody once observed to the eminent philosopher Wittgenstein how stupid medieval Europeans living before the time of Copernicus must have been that they could have looked at the sky and thought that the sun was circling the earth. Surely a modicum of astronomical good sense would have told them that the reverse was true. Wittgenstein is said to have replied: ‘I agree. But I wonder what it would have looked like if the sun had been circling the earth.’
The point is that it would look exactly the same. When we observe nature we see what we want to see, according to what we believe we know about it at the time. Nature is disordered, powerful and chaotic, and through fear of the chaos we impose system on it…We need to have an overall explanation of what the universe is and how it functions…we develop explanatory theories which will give structure to natural phenomena: we classify nature into a coherent system which appears to do what we say it does.
This view of the universe permeates all aspects of our life. All communities in all places at all times manifest their own view of reality in what they do. The entire culture reflects the contemporary model of reality. We are what we know. And when the body of knowledge changes, so do we. – James Burke, Preface and Chapter 1, “The Way We Are”, 1985; The Day The Universe Changed
With keen insight and unadorned eloquence James Burke- the esteemed historian of science, technology and innovation- has at once provided the reader a basic understanding of human thought as the dynamic of history, together with a secure footing upon which to analyze and appraise the subsequent philosophical threat now confronting Western Civilization, and American FREEDOM particularly.
As we proceed, we are once again reminded of the gist of my thesis, generally reflected throughout this journal: Without intellectual FREEDOM, there can be no societal FREEDOM, economic FREEDOM nor political FREEDOM. That free institutions and a stable society will become impossible to maintain as FREEDOM of thought is diminished. And that this very situation, this diminution of intellectual FREEDOM, is now at work in our country and in our civilization by our own choice and effort- not by government decree, as many would claim.
James Burke’s award-winning book and PBS television series, The Day The Universe Changed, interestingly observes the human tendency in history to formulate explanations about the content and operation of the natural world, according to what is already ‘known’. This ‘knowledge’ serves to structure everything that is done and thought in society, because it conveys the truth.
With a change in the truth comes a change in ‘knowledge’. For example, when Galileo’s telescope revealed in 1609 and 1610 the satellites circling Jupiter and the imperfections and irregularities of the moon’s surface, the ‘knowledge’ of an earth-centered universe and perfect planetary spheres began to change. And with the change in knowledge came a change in architecture, music, literature, art, science, economics and politics- that is, in civilization.
In the roughly two centuries that separated the naturalist John Ray’s (a member in the Royal Society with Isaac Newton) The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), and the naturalist Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), the truth of God’s static creation increasingly gave way to naturalism and evolutionary views of nature.
As Benjamin Wiker aptly describes it in his book The Darwin Myth, “We entered the nineteenth century with Christian assumptions for the most part intact: that we were fallen but redeemable creatures made in the image of God. We exited in a Godless cosmos, as mere animals who had managed, through much luck and struggle, to climb from unimaginably low origins to a little above the apes.”
Professor John C. Greene perceptively observes in his book The Death of Adam; Evolution And Its Impact On Western Thought; “As faith in the stability and wise design of the structures of nature declined, there was a compensating effort to find in the idea of progress a new world view which would give meaning to science and direction to human history.”
The question we need to ask ourselves is whether it is possible that a change in the truth- which directly affects what we ‘know’- can be ill-conceived and erroneously established?
Monday, August 31, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #13
Wisdom calls aloud in the street,
she raises her voice in the public squares;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
“How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
If you had responded to my rebuke,
I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you.
But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,
since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you-
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me.
Since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord,
since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.” – Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel (970-930 B.C.); writing in Proverbs 1: 20- 33
I love Solomon’s personification of Wisdom, as though it were a living, breathing entity: a Being. Much like the poem spoken by Job, in the depth of his anguish and sorrow, Wisdom would seem to represent considerably more than merely education to a lost and suffering humanity. And to a young Republic comprised of those similarly oppressed, seeking to establish a Novus Ordo Seclorum (new order of the ages).
“…Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds of the air.
Destruction and Death say,
“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.’
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
And he said to man,
‘The fear of the Lord- that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.’ " – Job 28: 20- 28
Journal Entry #13
Wisdom calls aloud in the street,
she raises her voice in the public squares;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
“How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
If you had responded to my rebuke,
I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you.
But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,
since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you-
when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me.
Since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord,
since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.” – Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel (970-930 B.C.); writing in Proverbs 1: 20- 33
I love Solomon’s personification of Wisdom, as though it were a living, breathing entity: a Being. Much like the poem spoken by Job, in the depth of his anguish and sorrow, Wisdom would seem to represent considerably more than merely education to a lost and suffering humanity. And to a young Republic comprised of those similarly oppressed, seeking to establish a Novus Ordo Seclorum (new order of the ages).
“…Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds of the air.
Destruction and Death say,
“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.’
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
And he said to man,
‘The fear of the Lord- that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.’ " – Job 28: 20- 28
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #12
Most people would concede the wisdom to post a guard or sentinel- a watchman- to maintain a vigilant lookout for potential threats to something regarded as valuable and worthy of securing. Whether we’re talking about the lone individual with a flashlight walking about a dark warehouse at night, the most sophisticated electronic security systems, or the best computer firewall and anti-virus software, securing our possessions and information is of paramount concern to us all.
Even in the historical document which modern thought considers largely irrelevant- the Bible- we encounter the perceived need to provide a watch, in this case for an entire people; “…Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel…” The quote is from Ezekiel, a member of a prominent Jewish family who was in the first wave of exiles to Babylon- along with Daniel- in 597 B.C., as the Babylonian Empire systematically subjugated and progressively crushed the southern Kingdom of Judah, while deporting its citizens.
In a very real sense the historian necessarily fulfills the role of a watchman, as he or she labors to secure a reliable record of the past, as well as vigilantly studying this same record for any sign of potentially threatening tendencies that bear upon the future. True to this calling, I have attempted to inform and alert the Reader- by means of this Journal- to the current crisis we now face, as a nation and as a civilization.
The warning is this: There exists a philosophical threshold to self-government, which is democracy, beyond which we can no longer ensure free institutions and a stable society. Put another way, a product of The Age of Reason (the eighteenth century Enlightenment)- which is what the American Republic is- can no longer be sustained nor endure in an intellectual climate that has become hostile to Reason.
I have written, in addition to this Journal, correspondence to our nation’s political, business and media leaders in the hope that some of these would respond to the warnings posted by this watchman, and join their actions with mine to avert the coming collapse of FREEDOM. Toward this end, I have reproduced some of these letters for you, the Reader. Perhaps you will display slightly more concern than many of them.
Dear President Obama, May, 2009
It is only with the deepest respect that I write you concerning an extremely serious, though hitherto unrecognized peril to our democracy. Such peril not only inhibits the effective working of our Republic, but threatens its very survival. At present we are all justifiably preoccupied with the severe financial and economic downturn plaguing our nation.
To be sure, specific economic factors constitute the proximate cause of this gathering crisis. However, my historical analyses indicate this situation is much more than the sum of a series of financial failures. In actuality, our economic woes are symptomatic of a greater instability besetting American society, borne of a latent structural deformation in democracy itself.
This point cannot be emphasized enough. Democracy’s structural instability should not be construed as simply one more problem: it is The Problem. And it promises not only further instability, but eventually structural failure- perhaps catastrophic failure. Consequently, a resort to change in our economic policies or modification of the free market system will prove in the long run insufficient to allay our national problems. Much like a doctor who treats only the symptoms of a disease and ignores its source, so we shall invite calamity if we fail to address the empirical source of our national crisis.
Enclosed is my historical research paper [“The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma”], culled from a larger work upon which I’ve been laboring for sixteen years. This larger project is the result of my efforts in a field I’ve pioneered, which I term historical seismology. The purpose of the paper in no way seeks to discount or denigrate the fine reputation of science. In fact, I’m concerned that the scientific enterprise is as much endangered as democracy by the peril I describe.
What recommends this work to reason and to your attention, is the undeniable validity of its conclusions. Four years ago this paper was submitted to the President, Vice President, key Congressional leaders, various corporate CEO’s and members of the media, warning them of the imminent peril to our democratic society: To no avail. Perhaps, in view of recent events we should reflect on this corporate indifference, and then confer a degree of credibility to my historical analyses. Thank you for your kind and thoughtful attention. Sincerely…
Dear President Bush, June, 2005
In this the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, it is exceedingly important to remember the general contours of that enormous conflict fought seemingly so long ago. In his book The Second World War John Keegan, formerly an instructor at the British Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, came to understand the war first as a human event.
He writes that the “Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world’s seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilisation.” Like an earthquake of great magnitude, such a cataclysmic event inevitably would transmit its shockwaves throughout all of human civilization, to generations far removed from the epicenter of conflict.
It is the purpose of this paper [“The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma”] to call to your attention the substance of these effects in Western Civilization today. Specifically, there yet remains the vibrant irrationalism which once raised the specter of complete totalitarianism and which, if we do not now confront it, will just as surely cause a seismic shift in the present world order back to that tyranny we so narrowly escaped.
This vigorous irrationalism is the common denominator which unites many apparently unrelated features of our modern world. Fantastic as it may sound, the insistence by modern science that there exists in nature an evolutionary mechanism, and the otherwise dissimilar ideology of worldwide jihad, with its dramatically different assertion, both proceed from the common irrational tendency to define the same natural order quite apart from objective truth. And both programs demand complete assent.
Consequently, democratic government and liberty are weakened from within and threatened from without. Stated plainly, Western Civilization is now caught in a lethal squeeze play. For the sake of our future, please join with this historian to organize a national conversation on these issues, beginning with the ideas you will shortly encounter herein. The only alternative to this discussion is the course which leads to eventual servitude and perpetual darkness. Indifference is no longer an option. Sincerely…
The most encouraging response I received from all this correspondence was a kind and gracious letter from Vice President Joseph Biden.
Dear Montag, June 26, 2009
Thank you for taking the time to write and I am honored you would share your ideas with me. This is an extraordinary moment in our nation’s history and it will take the passion and ideas of citizens like you to help solve the issues before us.
President Obama and I understand that our country has great challenges ahead. However, the answers to these challenges are not confined to the halls of Washington D.C., but reside in the minds of people around the globe.
Never at any point in my years of public service has the energy of the American people been more abundant. We cannot lose this moment, we cannot squander the opportunities before us, so I encourage you to stay engaged and continue working to reshape the world around us.
It is letters like yours that continually renew my confidence about what we can achieve together. I truly appreciate your ideas, and your taking the time to write. Sincerely, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Vice President Biden is quite right in saying that our nation’s problems can only be solved by WE THE PEOPLE, engaged, working together and thinking reasonably and coherently. Anything less and we will surely see self-government perish. Shake off your apathy America!
Journal Entry #12
Most people would concede the wisdom to post a guard or sentinel- a watchman- to maintain a vigilant lookout for potential threats to something regarded as valuable and worthy of securing. Whether we’re talking about the lone individual with a flashlight walking about a dark warehouse at night, the most sophisticated electronic security systems, or the best computer firewall and anti-virus software, securing our possessions and information is of paramount concern to us all.
Even in the historical document which modern thought considers largely irrelevant- the Bible- we encounter the perceived need to provide a watch, in this case for an entire people; “…Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel…” The quote is from Ezekiel, a member of a prominent Jewish family who was in the first wave of exiles to Babylon- along with Daniel- in 597 B.C., as the Babylonian Empire systematically subjugated and progressively crushed the southern Kingdom of Judah, while deporting its citizens.
In a very real sense the historian necessarily fulfills the role of a watchman, as he or she labors to secure a reliable record of the past, as well as vigilantly studying this same record for any sign of potentially threatening tendencies that bear upon the future. True to this calling, I have attempted to inform and alert the Reader- by means of this Journal- to the current crisis we now face, as a nation and as a civilization.
The warning is this: There exists a philosophical threshold to self-government, which is democracy, beyond which we can no longer ensure free institutions and a stable society. Put another way, a product of The Age of Reason (the eighteenth century Enlightenment)- which is what the American Republic is- can no longer be sustained nor endure in an intellectual climate that has become hostile to Reason.
I have written, in addition to this Journal, correspondence to our nation’s political, business and media leaders in the hope that some of these would respond to the warnings posted by this watchman, and join their actions with mine to avert the coming collapse of FREEDOM. Toward this end, I have reproduced some of these letters for you, the Reader. Perhaps you will display slightly more concern than many of them.
Dear President Obama, May, 2009
It is only with the deepest respect that I write you concerning an extremely serious, though hitherto unrecognized peril to our democracy. Such peril not only inhibits the effective working of our Republic, but threatens its very survival. At present we are all justifiably preoccupied with the severe financial and economic downturn plaguing our nation.
To be sure, specific economic factors constitute the proximate cause of this gathering crisis. However, my historical analyses indicate this situation is much more than the sum of a series of financial failures. In actuality, our economic woes are symptomatic of a greater instability besetting American society, borne of a latent structural deformation in democracy itself.
This point cannot be emphasized enough. Democracy’s structural instability should not be construed as simply one more problem: it is The Problem. And it promises not only further instability, but eventually structural failure- perhaps catastrophic failure. Consequently, a resort to change in our economic policies or modification of the free market system will prove in the long run insufficient to allay our national problems. Much like a doctor who treats only the symptoms of a disease and ignores its source, so we shall invite calamity if we fail to address the empirical source of our national crisis.
Enclosed is my historical research paper [“The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma”], culled from a larger work upon which I’ve been laboring for sixteen years. This larger project is the result of my efforts in a field I’ve pioneered, which I term historical seismology. The purpose of the paper in no way seeks to discount or denigrate the fine reputation of science. In fact, I’m concerned that the scientific enterprise is as much endangered as democracy by the peril I describe.
What recommends this work to reason and to your attention, is the undeniable validity of its conclusions. Four years ago this paper was submitted to the President, Vice President, key Congressional leaders, various corporate CEO’s and members of the media, warning them of the imminent peril to our democratic society: To no avail. Perhaps, in view of recent events we should reflect on this corporate indifference, and then confer a degree of credibility to my historical analyses. Thank you for your kind and thoughtful attention. Sincerely…
Dear President Bush, June, 2005
In this the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, it is exceedingly important to remember the general contours of that enormous conflict fought seemingly so long ago. In his book The Second World War John Keegan, formerly an instructor at the British Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, came to understand the war first as a human event.
He writes that the “Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world’s seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilisation.” Like an earthquake of great magnitude, such a cataclysmic event inevitably would transmit its shockwaves throughout all of human civilization, to generations far removed from the epicenter of conflict.
It is the purpose of this paper [“The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma”] to call to your attention the substance of these effects in Western Civilization today. Specifically, there yet remains the vibrant irrationalism which once raised the specter of complete totalitarianism and which, if we do not now confront it, will just as surely cause a seismic shift in the present world order back to that tyranny we so narrowly escaped.
This vigorous irrationalism is the common denominator which unites many apparently unrelated features of our modern world. Fantastic as it may sound, the insistence by modern science that there exists in nature an evolutionary mechanism, and the otherwise dissimilar ideology of worldwide jihad, with its dramatically different assertion, both proceed from the common irrational tendency to define the same natural order quite apart from objective truth. And both programs demand complete assent.
Consequently, democratic government and liberty are weakened from within and threatened from without. Stated plainly, Western Civilization is now caught in a lethal squeeze play. For the sake of our future, please join with this historian to organize a national conversation on these issues, beginning with the ideas you will shortly encounter herein. The only alternative to this discussion is the course which leads to eventual servitude and perpetual darkness. Indifference is no longer an option. Sincerely…
The most encouraging response I received from all this correspondence was a kind and gracious letter from Vice President Joseph Biden.
Dear Montag, June 26, 2009
Thank you for taking the time to write and I am honored you would share your ideas with me. This is an extraordinary moment in our nation’s history and it will take the passion and ideas of citizens like you to help solve the issues before us.
President Obama and I understand that our country has great challenges ahead. However, the answers to these challenges are not confined to the halls of Washington D.C., but reside in the minds of people around the globe.
Never at any point in my years of public service has the energy of the American people been more abundant. We cannot lose this moment, we cannot squander the opportunities before us, so I encourage you to stay engaged and continue working to reshape the world around us.
It is letters like yours that continually renew my confidence about what we can achieve together. I truly appreciate your ideas, and your taking the time to write. Sincerely, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Vice President Biden is quite right in saying that our nation’s problems can only be solved by WE THE PEOPLE, engaged, working together and thinking reasonably and coherently. Anything less and we will surely see self-government perish. Shake off your apathy America!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #11
…American political conflicts are not generally fought on the battleground of ideas. The thoroughly non-Ideological Man is usually designated as steward of the American political community. This is partly a good thing, because everyone knows that ideological totalism can bring whole societies down, as it did Hitler’s, and permanently terrorize others, as Communism has done. The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.
America, most historians teach us, has sought to avoid the extremes, to be flexible without resembling Silly Putty; to be principled without being arch. I think our country is not clearly enough avoiding the former extreme. I think she is in danger of losing her identity- not on account of the orthodoxy that we are being told in some quarters threatens to suffocate us; but for failure to nourish any orthodoxy at all. I think the attenuation of the early principles of this country has made America vulnerable to the most opportunistic ideology of the day, the strange and complex ideology of modern liberalism. I think, moreover, that disordered and confused though it concededly is these days, conservatism is the only apparent rallying point...- William F. Buckley, Jr., Preface, 1959; Up From Liberalism
It is entirely fitting and proper to linger for a short spell, over the words and thoughts of one of America’s foremost philosophical laborers: Bill Buckley, Jr. Most will argue- not unreasonably- that he was a Conservative thinker, but I regard him rather as simply a thinker; an extremely profound one at that. Both for his intellectual penetration and honesty, to say nothing of his humor, he has few peers. He was truly a man for the times.
The moral and intellectual confusion in the years following World War Two would surely have been far worse were it not for his tireless pursuit of truth. Together with his fidelity to the enduring principles sustaining the American Republic, Bill Buckley was much more than merely an observer. His insistence that we should always remember to feed our souls as well as our brains placed him head and shoulders above all the other commentators of the American scene in the Cold War era.
In his Baccalaureate Address to St. Joseph’s College in June, 1952, Bill Buckley challenged his audience to consider the dangerous turn American education and society had taken in the post-War era. “There is not enough room, however, for the New Social Order and religion. The New Order is philosophically wedded to the doctrine that the test of truth is its ability to win acceptance by the majority. Economically, the New Order is egalitarian; politically, it is majoritarian; emotionally, it is infatuated with the State, which it honors as the dispenser of all good, the unchallengeable and irreproachable steward of every human being.”
“It clearly won’t do, then, to foster within some schools a respect for an absolute, intractable, unbribable God, a divine Intelligence who is utterly unconcerned with other people’s versions of truth and humorlessly inattentive to majority opinion. It won’t do to tolerate a competitor for the allegiance of man. The State prefers a secure monopoly for itself. It is intolerably divisive to have God and the State scrapping for disciples…”
“…You graduate into a turbulent and confusing and perverse world situation which, because so many men have forgotten the lessons of Christ and because so many men have turned their back on Him, seriously threatens the international ascendancy of evil: a physical war against Christian civilization, and an intellectual war against the foundations of our spiritual faith.”
In conjunction with William F. Buckley’s incisive thought and his voluminous writing, is the constellation of writers, philosophers, historians, and economists to whom he introduces the reader. One of these, the historian Russell Kirk, observed that since the eighteenth century Enlightenment, “At least five major schools of radical thought have competed for public favor since [Edmund] Burke entered politics: the rationalism of the philosophes, the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies, the utilitarianism of the Benthamites, the positivism of Comte’s school, and the collectivistic materialism of Marx and other socialists.”
Beginning with our next journal entry, we shall study more closely these five major schools of radical thought; not least because philosophical elements of all these schools of thought continue to significantly influence- and threaten- our polity and society. Also, we would do well to nourish, as Americans, some degree of orthodoxy and reinvigorate the early principles of our country. As reason- and faith- would seem to recommend; as William F. Buckley, Jr. would certainly advocate, were he still with us today.
Journal Entry #11
…American political conflicts are not generally fought on the battleground of ideas. The thoroughly non-Ideological Man is usually designated as steward of the American political community. This is partly a good thing, because everyone knows that ideological totalism can bring whole societies down, as it did Hitler’s, and permanently terrorize others, as Communism has done. The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.
America, most historians teach us, has sought to avoid the extremes, to be flexible without resembling Silly Putty; to be principled without being arch. I think our country is not clearly enough avoiding the former extreme. I think she is in danger of losing her identity- not on account of the orthodoxy that we are being told in some quarters threatens to suffocate us; but for failure to nourish any orthodoxy at all. I think the attenuation of the early principles of this country has made America vulnerable to the most opportunistic ideology of the day, the strange and complex ideology of modern liberalism. I think, moreover, that disordered and confused though it concededly is these days, conservatism is the only apparent rallying point...- William F. Buckley, Jr., Preface, 1959; Up From Liberalism
It is entirely fitting and proper to linger for a short spell, over the words and thoughts of one of America’s foremost philosophical laborers: Bill Buckley, Jr. Most will argue- not unreasonably- that he was a Conservative thinker, but I regard him rather as simply a thinker; an extremely profound one at that. Both for his intellectual penetration and honesty, to say nothing of his humor, he has few peers. He was truly a man for the times.
The moral and intellectual confusion in the years following World War Two would surely have been far worse were it not for his tireless pursuit of truth. Together with his fidelity to the enduring principles sustaining the American Republic, Bill Buckley was much more than merely an observer. His insistence that we should always remember to feed our souls as well as our brains placed him head and shoulders above all the other commentators of the American scene in the Cold War era.
In his Baccalaureate Address to St. Joseph’s College in June, 1952, Bill Buckley challenged his audience to consider the dangerous turn American education and society had taken in the post-War era. “There is not enough room, however, for the New Social Order and religion. The New Order is philosophically wedded to the doctrine that the test of truth is its ability to win acceptance by the majority. Economically, the New Order is egalitarian; politically, it is majoritarian; emotionally, it is infatuated with the State, which it honors as the dispenser of all good, the unchallengeable and irreproachable steward of every human being.”
“It clearly won’t do, then, to foster within some schools a respect for an absolute, intractable, unbribable God, a divine Intelligence who is utterly unconcerned with other people’s versions of truth and humorlessly inattentive to majority opinion. It won’t do to tolerate a competitor for the allegiance of man. The State prefers a secure monopoly for itself. It is intolerably divisive to have God and the State scrapping for disciples…”
“…You graduate into a turbulent and confusing and perverse world situation which, because so many men have forgotten the lessons of Christ and because so many men have turned their back on Him, seriously threatens the international ascendancy of evil: a physical war against Christian civilization, and an intellectual war against the foundations of our spiritual faith.”
In conjunction with William F. Buckley’s incisive thought and his voluminous writing, is the constellation of writers, philosophers, historians, and economists to whom he introduces the reader. One of these, the historian Russell Kirk, observed that since the eighteenth century Enlightenment, “At least five major schools of radical thought have competed for public favor since [Edmund] Burke entered politics: the rationalism of the philosophes, the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies, the utilitarianism of the Benthamites, the positivism of Comte’s school, and the collectivistic materialism of Marx and other socialists.”
Beginning with our next journal entry, we shall study more closely these five major schools of radical thought; not least because philosophical elements of all these schools of thought continue to significantly influence- and threaten- our polity and society. Also, we would do well to nourish, as Americans, some degree of orthodoxy and reinvigorate the early principles of our country. As reason- and faith- would seem to recommend; as William F. Buckley, Jr. would certainly advocate, were he still with us today.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #10
In current American usage, the phrase ‘that’s history’ is commonly used to dismiss something as unimportant, of no relevance to current concerns… – Professor Bernard Lewis; The Crisis of Islam
Of all histories the history of ideas is the most difficult and elusive. Unlike things, ideas cannot be handled, weighed, and measured. They exert a powerful force in human history, but a force difficult to estimate…Western thought is all of a piece, an organic growth of scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas mutually interacting. In Darwin’s day the impact of natural science on philosophy and religion was more spectacular than their return effect on scientific ideas. Indeed, it was so spectacular that some thinkers predicted the early extinction of theology and metaphysics and a general triumph of modes of thought derived from natural science. – Professor John C. Greene, Rockwell Lectures, delivered at Rice University, 1960; Darwin and the Modern World View
I am inclined to the opinion that a nation- like an individual- encounters throughout its life many and various historical crossroads, and that the wrong road is as easily chosen as the right one. While the consequences of a nation’s choices are certain they’re not always evident, though the road signs marking the route are conspicuously discernable. Perhaps the most valuable skill we should cultivate and pass along to our children therefore, is the ability to read the signs marking the road we travel.
Often times, the preferred road is chosen simply on the basis that it represents a change or break with the past. Seldom can this benefit a nation; such change- because it is inexactly and incompletely devised- begets turmoil, as we currently ponder the promise of FREEDOM in America. Arguably the most significant historical crossroads we’ve encountered since the Civil War is World War Two, in which the United States fought for its very survival, and for a world no longer threatened by totalitarian governments that practice total war.
Progress- an improvement over the past- is rightly to be desired. However, the impulse to change must be informed by the recognition that “change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence”, to quote the eminent historian Russell Kirk.
We might well include the citizen- along with the statesman- who ought to live by the guidance of Providence and the exercise of prudence, mindful that these are gotten only by recourse to the ideas, knowledge and experience of history. Providence, understood as the power of God sustaining and guiding human destiny, is a relevant concept in our calculations to the extent that we regard a nation- as Professor Kirk did- not only as an association of citizens but as a community of souls as well.
Doesn’t history reveal, after all, that humanity is prompted to action at least as much by its heart as by its head? Predictably, Professor Kirk perceived an unmistakable link between the disordered soul of a people and the disorder, and hence instability, of the community.
In our study of human society and its ultimate expression- the polity- we proceed according to the postulate that in the absence of intellectual FREEDOM, it is impossible to ensure political FREEDOM. Twentieth century history clearly shows that whenever this unalterable relationship is systematically ignored representative government is supplanted (to supersede another by force or treachery) by Leviathan (the unbounded and unrestrained STATE).
We recall that philosophy, according to the standard meaning of the term, is the systematic search for truth, and the formulation of truthful statements about the existing order of things, in the absence of preference or prejudice. Not unlike the habit of a person who enters an unfamiliar, darkened room and reaches for the light switch before proceeding in, so philosophy is an activity for throwing light on the natural- and knowable- world in which we all walk, in order to avoid stumbling or falling.
Another way of understanding the proper role of philosophy is to view it as a reflective method to establish and maintain a reasonable correspondence- a balanced, proportional or congruent relationship- between the objects of the world and our knowledge of those objects. Very much like the balancing act of the circus performer whose high-wire exploits are entirely concerned with maintaining the precise balance between their posture and weight distribution and the gravity of the earth, as they traverse their course.
What constitutes the existing order about which philosophy seeks to formulate truthful statements? According to Professor Greene, the actually existing order centers on the issues of nature, man and God. How these are now defined and emphasized in the intellectual climate of positivistic naturalism has served to influence our institutions, directed our national life and determined the disposition of all our knowledge.
Currently, Western thought claims to have “established” through the empirical sciences positive knowledge- positivism- of an exclusively natural order- naturalism- from which humanity has evolved. The idea of a God, on the other hand, is a fabrication, a product of myth or superstition and stands in opposition to the scientific “fact” of our exclusively material reality- materialism.
In fact, as we study the history of modern science- particularly the influence upon Western thought of Charles Darwin’s ideas- we will surely obtain a distorted image “unless we view it in proper perspective, against the background of the historical development of the conflict between science and religion in modern times”, writes Professor Greene.
Sir Isaac Newton’s seventeenth century work in mathematics and physics, represented in his Principia (1687), “gave rise to a mechanical philosophy in which nature was conceived as a law-bound system of matter in motion, every state of the system proceeding from previous states by mathematical rule”, according to Professor Greene.
In this, the latest stage of the historical development of the conflict between science and religion, “the methods of natural science were extended to the study of man and society, and the claim was advanced in some quarters that these methods constituted man’s only reliable access to knowledge of reality.” Furthermore, Professor Greene writes, “the progress of science and technology enhanced the prestige of human reason and intoxicated men with the hope that society was capable of indefinite progress in this world…”
Now this historical conflict that saw the installation of science as the dominant intellectual tendency in Western thought found a practical outlet in the Second World War, the twentieth century’s titanic slaughter in which religion was replaced by a combination of neo-paganism and the glorification of the STATE, as philosophy was eclipsed by that supreme imposter known as ideology.
It is estimated that fifty million people died in this war, but the body count is much higher if one includes the number murdered by the totalitarian powers as they implemented their ideological plans and consolidated their political structures. This was indeed, total war; the complete assault upon all aspects of civilization and all that it had come to revere, all that it had rationally established, and the God our civilization had come to worship.
The historical crossroads confronting America as it contemplated the necessity of building a peaceful post-war world involved the choice between two roads: treating the war simply as a military collision of divergent economies and cultures. Or, on the other hand, a monumental and unprecedented struggle inspired by the violent impulses of a God-negated irrationalism that zealously sought the destruction of a rational Western civilization.
Contrary to her best interests, America expediently chose the former road and, in so doing, established a philosophical imbalance between the actually existing order of things and our knowledge of this order. The resultant ontological (the branch of philosophy that studies being or existence) instability to the structure of democracy would subsequently be felt- via its intellectual habits and national policies- throughout its economic, political and social parts.
Predictably, the current financial meltdown and recession we now are experiencing are very much a product of the philosophical imbalance of Western thought and its consequent instability. This national instability will persist and intensify to the extent we permit this philosophical imbalance to continue; and our FREEDOM will disappear.
Awake America! Rouse yourself from your fatal slumber! Our FREEDOM is even now receding!
Journal Entry #10
In current American usage, the phrase ‘that’s history’ is commonly used to dismiss something as unimportant, of no relevance to current concerns… – Professor Bernard Lewis; The Crisis of Islam
Of all histories the history of ideas is the most difficult and elusive. Unlike things, ideas cannot be handled, weighed, and measured. They exert a powerful force in human history, but a force difficult to estimate…Western thought is all of a piece, an organic growth of scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas mutually interacting. In Darwin’s day the impact of natural science on philosophy and religion was more spectacular than their return effect on scientific ideas. Indeed, it was so spectacular that some thinkers predicted the early extinction of theology and metaphysics and a general triumph of modes of thought derived from natural science. – Professor John C. Greene, Rockwell Lectures, delivered at Rice University, 1960; Darwin and the Modern World View
I am inclined to the opinion that a nation- like an individual- encounters throughout its life many and various historical crossroads, and that the wrong road is as easily chosen as the right one. While the consequences of a nation’s choices are certain they’re not always evident, though the road signs marking the route are conspicuously discernable. Perhaps the most valuable skill we should cultivate and pass along to our children therefore, is the ability to read the signs marking the road we travel.
Often times, the preferred road is chosen simply on the basis that it represents a change or break with the past. Seldom can this benefit a nation; such change- because it is inexactly and incompletely devised- begets turmoil, as we currently ponder the promise of FREEDOM in America. Arguably the most significant historical crossroads we’ve encountered since the Civil War is World War Two, in which the United States fought for its very survival, and for a world no longer threatened by totalitarian governments that practice total war.
Progress- an improvement over the past- is rightly to be desired. However, the impulse to change must be informed by the recognition that “change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence”, to quote the eminent historian Russell Kirk.
We might well include the citizen- along with the statesman- who ought to live by the guidance of Providence and the exercise of prudence, mindful that these are gotten only by recourse to the ideas, knowledge and experience of history. Providence, understood as the power of God sustaining and guiding human destiny, is a relevant concept in our calculations to the extent that we regard a nation- as Professor Kirk did- not only as an association of citizens but as a community of souls as well.
Doesn’t history reveal, after all, that humanity is prompted to action at least as much by its heart as by its head? Predictably, Professor Kirk perceived an unmistakable link between the disordered soul of a people and the disorder, and hence instability, of the community.
In our study of human society and its ultimate expression- the polity- we proceed according to the postulate that in the absence of intellectual FREEDOM, it is impossible to ensure political FREEDOM. Twentieth century history clearly shows that whenever this unalterable relationship is systematically ignored representative government is supplanted (to supersede another by force or treachery) by Leviathan (the unbounded and unrestrained STATE).
We recall that philosophy, according to the standard meaning of the term, is the systematic search for truth, and the formulation of truthful statements about the existing order of things, in the absence of preference or prejudice. Not unlike the habit of a person who enters an unfamiliar, darkened room and reaches for the light switch before proceeding in, so philosophy is an activity for throwing light on the natural- and knowable- world in which we all walk, in order to avoid stumbling or falling.
Another way of understanding the proper role of philosophy is to view it as a reflective method to establish and maintain a reasonable correspondence- a balanced, proportional or congruent relationship- between the objects of the world and our knowledge of those objects. Very much like the balancing act of the circus performer whose high-wire exploits are entirely concerned with maintaining the precise balance between their posture and weight distribution and the gravity of the earth, as they traverse their course.
What constitutes the existing order about which philosophy seeks to formulate truthful statements? According to Professor Greene, the actually existing order centers on the issues of nature, man and God. How these are now defined and emphasized in the intellectual climate of positivistic naturalism has served to influence our institutions, directed our national life and determined the disposition of all our knowledge.
Currently, Western thought claims to have “established” through the empirical sciences positive knowledge- positivism- of an exclusively natural order- naturalism- from which humanity has evolved. The idea of a God, on the other hand, is a fabrication, a product of myth or superstition and stands in opposition to the scientific “fact” of our exclusively material reality- materialism.
In fact, as we study the history of modern science- particularly the influence upon Western thought of Charles Darwin’s ideas- we will surely obtain a distorted image “unless we view it in proper perspective, against the background of the historical development of the conflict between science and religion in modern times”, writes Professor Greene.
Sir Isaac Newton’s seventeenth century work in mathematics and physics, represented in his Principia (1687), “gave rise to a mechanical philosophy in which nature was conceived as a law-bound system of matter in motion, every state of the system proceeding from previous states by mathematical rule”, according to Professor Greene.
In this, the latest stage of the historical development of the conflict between science and religion, “the methods of natural science were extended to the study of man and society, and the claim was advanced in some quarters that these methods constituted man’s only reliable access to knowledge of reality.” Furthermore, Professor Greene writes, “the progress of science and technology enhanced the prestige of human reason and intoxicated men with the hope that society was capable of indefinite progress in this world…”
Now this historical conflict that saw the installation of science as the dominant intellectual tendency in Western thought found a practical outlet in the Second World War, the twentieth century’s titanic slaughter in which religion was replaced by a combination of neo-paganism and the glorification of the STATE, as philosophy was eclipsed by that supreme imposter known as ideology.
It is estimated that fifty million people died in this war, but the body count is much higher if one includes the number murdered by the totalitarian powers as they implemented their ideological plans and consolidated their political structures. This was indeed, total war; the complete assault upon all aspects of civilization and all that it had come to revere, all that it had rationally established, and the God our civilization had come to worship.
The historical crossroads confronting America as it contemplated the necessity of building a peaceful post-war world involved the choice between two roads: treating the war simply as a military collision of divergent economies and cultures. Or, on the other hand, a monumental and unprecedented struggle inspired by the violent impulses of a God-negated irrationalism that zealously sought the destruction of a rational Western civilization.
Contrary to her best interests, America expediently chose the former road and, in so doing, established a philosophical imbalance between the actually existing order of things and our knowledge of this order. The resultant ontological (the branch of philosophy that studies being or existence) instability to the structure of democracy would subsequently be felt- via its intellectual habits and national policies- throughout its economic, political and social parts.
Predictably, the current financial meltdown and recession we now are experiencing are very much a product of the philosophical imbalance of Western thought and its consequent instability. This national instability will persist and intensify to the extent we permit this philosophical imbalance to continue; and our FREEDOM will disappear.
Awake America! Rouse yourself from your fatal slumber! Our FREEDOM is even now receding!
Friday, May 22, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #9
Did you know understanding is the key to the future? Historical understanding, that is. Undeniably, the future cannot exclusively be about itself. Because the future hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t exist. Consequently the future can’t be about nothing; it very likely will be about something.
Therefore, the future must be about the past. Whether as individuals or as a society, we will always engage the future in relation to the past. We might reasonably say that the future blends inevitably into the past, even as the past inescapably blends into the future.
The better we understand our yesterdays, the more capable we shall be at advantageously influencing our days to come. The converse must therefore be equally as true: the less we know about our yesterdays, the less capable we become at beneficially directing our tomorrows.
In a very real sense, we experience from our lack of historical understanding a form of blindness- both cultural and intellectual. We will, so to speak, be driving into the future with more blind spots than our favorite luxury SUV. We shall become increasingly blind to the historical solutions for tomorrow’s problems. Want some actual examples?
Did you know that the current financial/economic mess in America (and the rest of the industrialized world) is actually a symptom of a much larger- and more dangerous- social problem emanating from the early twentieth century? Thus, financial/economic solutions alone will not repair the mess, yet that’s exactly what we’re “banking” on.
Did you know that within the roughly thirty year period, from the early 1950’s to the end of the 1980’s, all of the tools and knowledge were developed to tap into an inexpensive and virtually limitless source of energy- possessing a relatively small processing cost? Yet the Federal government still is advancing the expensive and much less suitable ideas of wind farms, nuclear power and miles of solar panels.
Did you know that the theory of biological evolution can easily and quickly be disproved using knowledge available since the eighteenth century European Enlightenment, thereby preparing the way for the next giant stride in human intellectual progress? Yet the allegiance of the scientific community to evolution is so tenacious, they’ll engage in all sorts of monkey business to prevent you from hearing about it (view Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled"- a Must See on DVD).
And what can we reasonably speculate about America’s future? Perhaps, if we once again consult history…
Journal Entry #9
Did you know understanding is the key to the future? Historical understanding, that is. Undeniably, the future cannot exclusively be about itself. Because the future hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t exist. Consequently the future can’t be about nothing; it very likely will be about something.
Therefore, the future must be about the past. Whether as individuals or as a society, we will always engage the future in relation to the past. We might reasonably say that the future blends inevitably into the past, even as the past inescapably blends into the future.
The better we understand our yesterdays, the more capable we shall be at advantageously influencing our days to come. The converse must therefore be equally as true: the less we know about our yesterdays, the less capable we become at beneficially directing our tomorrows.
In a very real sense, we experience from our lack of historical understanding a form of blindness- both cultural and intellectual. We will, so to speak, be driving into the future with more blind spots than our favorite luxury SUV. We shall become increasingly blind to the historical solutions for tomorrow’s problems. Want some actual examples?
Did you know that the current financial/economic mess in America (and the rest of the industrialized world) is actually a symptom of a much larger- and more dangerous- social problem emanating from the early twentieth century? Thus, financial/economic solutions alone will not repair the mess, yet that’s exactly what we’re “banking” on.
Did you know that within the roughly thirty year period, from the early 1950’s to the end of the 1980’s, all of the tools and knowledge were developed to tap into an inexpensive and virtually limitless source of energy- possessing a relatively small processing cost? Yet the Federal government still is advancing the expensive and much less suitable ideas of wind farms, nuclear power and miles of solar panels.
Did you know that the theory of biological evolution can easily and quickly be disproved using knowledge available since the eighteenth century European Enlightenment, thereby preparing the way for the next giant stride in human intellectual progress? Yet the allegiance of the scientific community to evolution is so tenacious, they’ll engage in all sorts of monkey business to prevent you from hearing about it (view Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled"- a Must See on DVD).
And what can we reasonably speculate about America’s future? Perhaps, if we once again consult history…
Monday, February 23, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #8
…bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic. - Charles Sanders Peirce
The mold of a man stems from the mind of a child. Educators and Emperors have known this from time immemorial; so have Tyrants. – Epilogue, The Special One; The Outer Limits
One might reasonably ask what the study and practice of philosophy has to do with our political FREEDOM (or, for that matter, with anything else of day-to-day importance). It is a worthy question. The answer is: Everything. The degree of our political FREEDOM- as, indeed, of all our freedoms- depends, from start to finish, upon our intellectual FREEDOM; upon the precision and vitality of our philosophical activity. Historically, there is no dimension or realm of human civilization that can be isolated or exempted from philosophical activity.
From the perspective of history we observe the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, within which the inseparable connection between freedom of thought and political freedom is perfectly illustrated. As a matter of necessity, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia established ministries of propaganda (there was no independent media; all information was regulated, censored or created by and through this ministry) along with internal organs of repression- domestic secret police agencies- to quash political dissent and prevent deviation from official doctrine, thus ensuring ideological compliance and societal obedience.
Of the many duties the propaganda ministry discharged, the most critical was the exercise of absolute control over education in order to promote “correct” thinking and especially, to indoctrinate the youth for future service. Only those intellectual pursuits that served to support and validate the official political doctrine were tolerated. Deviationist thinking that encouraged heresy was extinguished. Imprisonment, reeducation, internal exile or execution awaited those who further persisted in such dangerous thinking.
Now if we unwisely were to regard totalitarian style government a relic, a political phenomenon of bygone centuries, then we ignore the existence today of the Peoples Republic of China- hardly a model of liberalism; or that totalitarianism is the exclusive product or vestige of Western, late medieval, monarchist-absolutist political tendencies, we then risk neglecting the Persian example of tyranny in today’s Iran- a nation of decidedly Middle Eastern orientation, thoroughly imbued (to permeate as if by dyeing) in Islam.
Consider this: The President of Iran was invited last year to deliver an address and speak freely at the United Nations and Columbia University (both widely covered and broadcast by the various media), though he extended no reciprocal offer to the American President to address the people of Iran. And couple this with the recent arbitrary arrest and detention- allegedly for espionage- of several visiting university professors, we readily gain a clear sense of the dictatorship in Iran.
Here in America, most of us would soon detect the emergence of, or even a gradual shift toward a totalitarian society, citing the establishment of various authoritarian tools of repression such as propaganda ministries, shadowy police agencies and their midnight goon squads, erosion of political, civil and personal liberty, all united under a dictatorial leader. Such is currently the case in Venezuela, as many of the citizens there have taken to the streets to protest and oppose Hugo Chavez’ gathering of all political authority into his own hands, henceforth to rule by arbitrary decree as “President for Life”.
Virtually all the totalitarian regimes we’ve explored are fundamentally the product of, and live to support authoritarian political and social ideologies. The exception is Iran, which is a product of religious dogma rather than political ideology. Nevertheless, all of these authoritarian societies basically share the identical feature of establishing, operating and extending themselves according to flawed philosophical methods, characterized by illogical reasoning that always culminates in a pronounced cultural hostility toward the correct use of reason.
At this juncture we need to ask ourselves this crucial question: by the exercise of these same flawed philosophical methods, are we in America equally vulnerable to the loss of our liberty- our FREEDOM- by the establishment of some degree of totalitarianism? Put another way, can a people deliver themselves into a de facto (not established by law, but by habit or custom) social tyranny of their own making while maintaining some semblance of political freedom?
The answer is: most definitely yes. We currently retain in America the image or sensation of being free by exercising the freedom to say and do and think many things, with one exception: the unrestrained freedom to pursue TRUTH. With the end of World War Two- an outcome secured as much by high industrialism, science and technology as by military strategy- it was largely perceived that the future international order would be shaped by space and the atom (that is, science and scientific thinking) in addition to politics and diplomacy.
The overwhelming (and quite logical) fact routinely overlooked however, is that the post-War era would be shaped increasingly more by the unresolved philosophical forces that had been at work thirty years before World War Two, and had made totalitarian government and total war possible in the first place. These philosophical forces would be clearly and sharply manifested in the global Cold War conflict between Western Liberalism and Soviet/Chinese Communism.
In short order, all of these Western ideas would come into violent conflict with Pan-Arab and then Pan-Islamic philosophies and worldviews. With the course of domestic and international events being so heavily dependent upon a basic understanding of philosophy, and the imbalance in American education of philosophical instruction, we can better comprehend the current social, political and economic instability we now are experiencing and which will, if not remedied, certainly precipitate a structural failure of democracy- perhaps catastrophic failure. Consequently, we shall turn our attention to the systematic method of Philosophy and the precise workings of Logic in order to distinguish bad reasoning from good, thereby departing Tyranny and ensuring our FREEDOM.
In a sensible world, using the standard meaning of the term, philosophy is the systematic search for truth, and the formulation of truthful statements about the objectively existing order of things, in the absence of preference or prejudice. Unfortunately, it is this critical philosophical function- to align as closely as possible, our thoughts and ideas with the actual order of existing things and processes- that Western culture, particularly in America, has now come to reject.
In its elemental form, according to Professor Edward Craig in his wonderfully concise Philosophy; A Very Short Introduction, philosophy proceeds with the understanding that all of us are, to a great extent, philosophers already. We all “have some kind of values by which we live our lives…And most of us favour some very general picture of what the world is like.”
According to the values we live by and the pictures we have of the world, we unconsciously answer two basic philosophical questions: “what should we do? And, what is there?” Formally, these questions are: “How ought we to live? And, what really exists?” These two questions imply a third: “how do we know, or if we don’t know how should we set about finding out- use our eyes, think, consult an oracle, ask a scientist?” When we set to work answering these questions, we inescapably begin to philosophize.
Journal Entry #8
…bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic. - Charles Sanders Peirce
The mold of a man stems from the mind of a child. Educators and Emperors have known this from time immemorial; so have Tyrants. – Epilogue, The Special One; The Outer Limits
One might reasonably ask what the study and practice of philosophy has to do with our political FREEDOM (or, for that matter, with anything else of day-to-day importance). It is a worthy question. The answer is: Everything. The degree of our political FREEDOM- as, indeed, of all our freedoms- depends, from start to finish, upon our intellectual FREEDOM; upon the precision and vitality of our philosophical activity. Historically, there is no dimension or realm of human civilization that can be isolated or exempted from philosophical activity.
From the perspective of history we observe the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, within which the inseparable connection between freedom of thought and political freedom is perfectly illustrated. As a matter of necessity, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia established ministries of propaganda (there was no independent media; all information was regulated, censored or created by and through this ministry) along with internal organs of repression- domestic secret police agencies- to quash political dissent and prevent deviation from official doctrine, thus ensuring ideological compliance and societal obedience.
Of the many duties the propaganda ministry discharged, the most critical was the exercise of absolute control over education in order to promote “correct” thinking and especially, to indoctrinate the youth for future service. Only those intellectual pursuits that served to support and validate the official political doctrine were tolerated. Deviationist thinking that encouraged heresy was extinguished. Imprisonment, reeducation, internal exile or execution awaited those who further persisted in such dangerous thinking.
Now if we unwisely were to regard totalitarian style government a relic, a political phenomenon of bygone centuries, then we ignore the existence today of the Peoples Republic of China- hardly a model of liberalism; or that totalitarianism is the exclusive product or vestige of Western, late medieval, monarchist-absolutist political tendencies, we then risk neglecting the Persian example of tyranny in today’s Iran- a nation of decidedly Middle Eastern orientation, thoroughly imbued (to permeate as if by dyeing) in Islam.
Consider this: The President of Iran was invited last year to deliver an address and speak freely at the United Nations and Columbia University (both widely covered and broadcast by the various media), though he extended no reciprocal offer to the American President to address the people of Iran. And couple this with the recent arbitrary arrest and detention- allegedly for espionage- of several visiting university professors, we readily gain a clear sense of the dictatorship in Iran.
Here in America, most of us would soon detect the emergence of, or even a gradual shift toward a totalitarian society, citing the establishment of various authoritarian tools of repression such as propaganda ministries, shadowy police agencies and their midnight goon squads, erosion of political, civil and personal liberty, all united under a dictatorial leader. Such is currently the case in Venezuela, as many of the citizens there have taken to the streets to protest and oppose Hugo Chavez’ gathering of all political authority into his own hands, henceforth to rule by arbitrary decree as “President for Life”.
Virtually all the totalitarian regimes we’ve explored are fundamentally the product of, and live to support authoritarian political and social ideologies. The exception is Iran, which is a product of religious dogma rather than political ideology. Nevertheless, all of these authoritarian societies basically share the identical feature of establishing, operating and extending themselves according to flawed philosophical methods, characterized by illogical reasoning that always culminates in a pronounced cultural hostility toward the correct use of reason.
At this juncture we need to ask ourselves this crucial question: by the exercise of these same flawed philosophical methods, are we in America equally vulnerable to the loss of our liberty- our FREEDOM- by the establishment of some degree of totalitarianism? Put another way, can a people deliver themselves into a de facto (not established by law, but by habit or custom) social tyranny of their own making while maintaining some semblance of political freedom?
The answer is: most definitely yes. We currently retain in America the image or sensation of being free by exercising the freedom to say and do and think many things, with one exception: the unrestrained freedom to pursue TRUTH. With the end of World War Two- an outcome secured as much by high industrialism, science and technology as by military strategy- it was largely perceived that the future international order would be shaped by space and the atom (that is, science and scientific thinking) in addition to politics and diplomacy.
The overwhelming (and quite logical) fact routinely overlooked however, is that the post-War era would be shaped increasingly more by the unresolved philosophical forces that had been at work thirty years before World War Two, and had made totalitarian government and total war possible in the first place. These philosophical forces would be clearly and sharply manifested in the global Cold War conflict between Western Liberalism and Soviet/Chinese Communism.
In short order, all of these Western ideas would come into violent conflict with Pan-Arab and then Pan-Islamic philosophies and worldviews. With the course of domestic and international events being so heavily dependent upon a basic understanding of philosophy, and the imbalance in American education of philosophical instruction, we can better comprehend the current social, political and economic instability we now are experiencing and which will, if not remedied, certainly precipitate a structural failure of democracy- perhaps catastrophic failure. Consequently, we shall turn our attention to the systematic method of Philosophy and the precise workings of Logic in order to distinguish bad reasoning from good, thereby departing Tyranny and ensuring our FREEDOM.
In a sensible world, using the standard meaning of the term, philosophy is the systematic search for truth, and the formulation of truthful statements about the objectively existing order of things, in the absence of preference or prejudice. Unfortunately, it is this critical philosophical function- to align as closely as possible, our thoughts and ideas with the actual order of existing things and processes- that Western culture, particularly in America, has now come to reject.
In its elemental form, according to Professor Edward Craig in his wonderfully concise Philosophy; A Very Short Introduction, philosophy proceeds with the understanding that all of us are, to a great extent, philosophers already. We all “have some kind of values by which we live our lives…And most of us favour some very general picture of what the world is like.”
According to the values we live by and the pictures we have of the world, we unconsciously answer two basic philosophical questions: “what should we do? And, what is there?” Formally, these questions are: “How ought we to live? And, what really exists?” These two questions imply a third: “how do we know, or if we don’t know how should we set about finding out- use our eyes, think, consult an oracle, ask a scientist?” When we set to work answering these questions, we inescapably begin to philosophize.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #7
When one of his audience said, “Convince me that logic is useful,” he said,
Would you have me demonstrate it?
“Yes.”
Well, then, must I not use a demonstrative argument?
And, when the other agreed, he said, How then shall you know if I impose upon you? And when the man had no answer, he said, You see how you yourself admit that logic is necessary, if without it you are not even able to learn this much- whether it is necessary or not . - Discourses of Epictetus
…arguments, like men, are often pretenders. - Plato
If we were to conduct an informal poll of American opinion concerning the most important college majors presently available to our students, almost certainly we would see the responses more or less correspond to the public’s perception of today’s most pressing issues. Topping the list of foremost academic areas of study at the university would be the physical sciences and engineering. Biology, genetics, physiology, organic chemistry, and medicine would be emphasized for the prolongation of life and the eradication of cancer and other serious disease.
Astronomy, meteorology, geology, computer science and physics would also be considered essential areas of study in order to deal with various issues of climate change, alternative energy sources and storage systems, geophysical and seismic processes, the profitable exploration of space, and nanotechnologies. Of course, engineering and mathematics in all of their many useful facets would assist and extend the activities of the physical sciences.
Next in importance would be the divisions within the business school: accounting, finance and banking, and economics. These would be considered vital areas of study for the advancement and enlargement of the activities of science, commerce and industry; all the more so for the near and distant future as our national and global financial and economic troubles persist and perhaps, multiply.
Of all these many and useful college majors mentioned in our informal poll, we would also surely find not a single vote cast for the study of philosophy. Indeed, if one were to consult a typical university catalogue of course offerings, philosophical studies would seldom be found amongst those listed to fulfill major requirements; at most, philosophy would be regarded as elective or optional.
Why should this matter? Because philosophy is absolutely essential to the operation of all the aforementioned disciplines- there is no exception! Furthermore, philosophy connects each area of study to the others: without philosophy, the findings in one field would have no relationship to, or bearing upon, the work in the others- once again, there are no exceptions!
Consequently, to the extent philosophy is shunted aside or excluded altogether, ALL of the other areas of knowledge become unproductive and, ultimately, arbitrary. Hardly a coincidence then, that our nation’s financial and economic sectors have finally been made such a mess after as many years (at least since the beginning of the 20th century) as philosophy has been regarded The Great Pariah (a member of a low social caste; outcast). And with this continued failure of reason- made possible through the absence of philosophical study in public education- will come ultimately, the failure of republican government and the demise of FREEDOM.
The branch of philosophy which specifically studies “the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning” is called Logic. Since reasoning is- or is supposed to be- an active part of all intellectual activities (from Astronomy to Zoology), Logic is therefore appropriate to all intellectual occasions. We can see from the introductory quotes to this journal entry that Logic is useful and necessary not only for enabling reason in the first instance, but is also quite necessary when faulty reasoning is intentionally being used under the guise of faultless reasoning.
So what precisely does philosophy do? That is to say, how does philosophy permit the working of the academic areas of study, as well as connect each to the other? In the next journal entry, we shall consult Professor Edward Craig of Cambridge University in order to see the three basic questions philosophy attempts to answer.
Journal Entry #7
When one of his audience said, “Convince me that logic is useful,” he said,
Would you have me demonstrate it?
“Yes.”
Well, then, must I not use a demonstrative argument?
And, when the other agreed, he said, How then shall you know if I impose upon you? And when the man had no answer, he said, You see how you yourself admit that logic is necessary, if without it you are not even able to learn this much- whether it is necessary or not . - Discourses of Epictetus
…arguments, like men, are often pretenders. - Plato
If we were to conduct an informal poll of American opinion concerning the most important college majors presently available to our students, almost certainly we would see the responses more or less correspond to the public’s perception of today’s most pressing issues. Topping the list of foremost academic areas of study at the university would be the physical sciences and engineering. Biology, genetics, physiology, organic chemistry, and medicine would be emphasized for the prolongation of life and the eradication of cancer and other serious disease.
Astronomy, meteorology, geology, computer science and physics would also be considered essential areas of study in order to deal with various issues of climate change, alternative energy sources and storage systems, geophysical and seismic processes, the profitable exploration of space, and nanotechnologies. Of course, engineering and mathematics in all of their many useful facets would assist and extend the activities of the physical sciences.
Next in importance would be the divisions within the business school: accounting, finance and banking, and economics. These would be considered vital areas of study for the advancement and enlargement of the activities of science, commerce and industry; all the more so for the near and distant future as our national and global financial and economic troubles persist and perhaps, multiply.
Of all these many and useful college majors mentioned in our informal poll, we would also surely find not a single vote cast for the study of philosophy. Indeed, if one were to consult a typical university catalogue of course offerings, philosophical studies would seldom be found amongst those listed to fulfill major requirements; at most, philosophy would be regarded as elective or optional.
Why should this matter? Because philosophy is absolutely essential to the operation of all the aforementioned disciplines- there is no exception! Furthermore, philosophy connects each area of study to the others: without philosophy, the findings in one field would have no relationship to, or bearing upon, the work in the others- once again, there are no exceptions!
Consequently, to the extent philosophy is shunted aside or excluded altogether, ALL of the other areas of knowledge become unproductive and, ultimately, arbitrary. Hardly a coincidence then, that our nation’s financial and economic sectors have finally been made such a mess after as many years (at least since the beginning of the 20th century) as philosophy has been regarded The Great Pariah (a member of a low social caste; outcast). And with this continued failure of reason- made possible through the absence of philosophical study in public education- will come ultimately, the failure of republican government and the demise of FREEDOM.
The branch of philosophy which specifically studies “the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning” is called Logic. Since reasoning is- or is supposed to be- an active part of all intellectual activities (from Astronomy to Zoology), Logic is therefore appropriate to all intellectual occasions. We can see from the introductory quotes to this journal entry that Logic is useful and necessary not only for enabling reason in the first instance, but is also quite necessary when faulty reasoning is intentionally being used under the guise of faultless reasoning.
So what precisely does philosophy do? That is to say, how does philosophy permit the working of the academic areas of study, as well as connect each to the other? In the next journal entry, we shall consult Professor Edward Craig of Cambridge University in order to see the three basic questions philosophy attempts to answer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)