Friday, March 27, 2020

The Dissolution of the West


This is another book about the dissolution of the West.

Ideas Have Consequences, by Richard Weaver

I was told of this book by a good friend.  Well, not exactly.  Obviously, I knew of the book, but had previously never looked into it.  This friend had just read it and was blown away.  He knows how much I have written on this “dissolution of the West” idea, yet still suggested that I would find it worthwhile.  As I greatly value his perspective, I decided to read the book.

I will follow my usual pattern of writing more than one post as I go along.  I am not sure that this will result in the best treatment for the book, but this method has become so ingrained that I don’t know if another approach even remains open to me.

It is in the introduction where Weaver points to what he sees as “the best representation of a change which came over man’s conception of reality….”

It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence.

Thereby ultimately calling into question the idea that there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man.  While I did not, at the time, know that Occam was the culprit (discovering this only later), it has been clear to me for some time that there is no chance for liberty as long as this idea of man being the pinnacle is held as the ideal.

The thread continues from Occam through many thinkers, scholars, and philosophers, ultimately leading to Hobbes, Locke, and other eighteenth century rationalists: man needed only to reason correctly from the evidence he saw in nature.  To wonder about purposes – especially what the world is for – is meaningless, as it suggests a power higher than man; something prior to nature.

Following on the heels of the rationalists was Darwinism – man explained by his environment.  Biological necessity would explain all.  This entire story is presented as a story of progress; therefore, it is difficult to get people to see it as anything else.  How on earth does one question the Enlightenment?

Yet, it is clear that there is a cultural decline – at least clear to those who consider such things.  Weaver looks to establish “the fact of decadence” as the most important duty of our time, and this decadence he sees in the cultural decline.

Jacques Barzun offered his definition of decadence in his wonderful work, From Dawn to Decadence, with this last century being the century of the West’s fall into decadence:

All that is meant by Decadence is “falling off.”  It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense.  On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance.  The loss it faces is that of Possibility.

We see this – there is plenty of energy in the ever-expanding animosity in the moral fight of the culture war.  In this, Weaver sees that Western man has squandered his estate – despite believing in the story of ever-advancing progress.  Yet is this ever-advancing story so? 

…let us waive all particular considerations of this sort and ask whether modern man, for reasons apparent or obscure, feels an increased happiness.  We must avoid superficial conceptions of this state and look for something fundamental.

Compare our modern philosophers to those of the medieval period; modern architecture to that of a thousand years ago; modern art, literature, and music to that of centuries past.

First, one must take into account the deep psychic anxiety, the extraordinary prevalence of neurosis, which make our age unique.

This book was first published in 1948.  What would Weaver write today?  The idea of a meaning crisis has fully entered the psyche, and it is visible in the juvenile acting out of many, and the suicides and opioid drug use of many others.

Added to this is another deprivation.  Man is constantly being assured today that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness.


I could write two-thousand words on this alone; instead, I will offer only seven: sheeple, milk cows, lambs led to slaughter.  This is the condition of man today, no matter how much “land of the free” junk is shoveled down his throat.

Reason alone cannot justify itself.  As Weaver notes…

Not without cause has the devil been called the prince of lawyers, and not by accident are Shakespeare’s villains good reasoners.

Reason without proper will and virtue is a dangerous weapon.  In the wrong hands, anything can be “reasonable.”  Weaver notes that we have become conditioned to accept anything, as we are no longer tied to what he calls “the metaphysical dream”:

It must be apparent that logic depends on the dream, and not the dream upon it.

 Am reminded of C. S. Lewis, from The Abolition of Man:

All the practical principles behind the Innovator’s case for posterity, or society, or the species, are there from time immemorial in the Tao.  But they are nowhere else.  Unless you accept these without question as being to the world of action what axioms are to the world of theory, you can have no practical principles whatever.

There must be an unquestioned foundation, one that is accepted as given.  From this, logic and reason can be applied.  Returning to Weaver:

How can men who disagree about what the world is for agree about any of the minutiae of daily conduct?

Precisely.  We argue about details when the issue regards fundamentals.  Yet we are taught that breaking convention is the path to “extending the boundaries of power or of knowledge.”  We see only the material, which only offers the knowledge of death – as the material ends at death.  What a meaningless life this offers.

Culture destroyed, obscenity praised, publicity sought, the violation of every sense of humanity, privacy lost, desecration a virtue.  This many describe as liberty; instead, these are our chains. 

And the loss of reflection and sentiment.  But it is sentiment that binds us to both the old and young, ancestors and descendants. 

Some form of sentiment, deriving from our orientation of the world, lies at the base of all congeniality.  A common metaphysical dream offers community, a common feeling about the world.  The absence of a metaphysical dream explains why…

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Conclusion

The only redemption lies in restraint imposed by idea; but our ideas, if they are not to worsen the confusion, must be harmonized by some vision.  Our task is much like finding the relationship between faith and reason for an age that does not know the meaning of faith.

13 comments:

  1. Liberty was officially lost in America when the 18th-century Enlightenment and Masonic founding fathers made liberty a goal instead of a corollary of implementing Yahweh's perfect law of liberty (Psalm 19:7-11, 119:44-45, James 2:12) as the supreme law of the land.

    "[B]ecause they have ... trespassed against my law ... they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind...." (Hosea 8:1, 7)


    If you don't want to believe me, perhaps you will Patrick Henry, who refused to attend the Constitutional Convention, declaring "I smelt a rat!"

    "...Convinced the Constitution would fail to secure and protect liberty, Patrick Henry voiced his concerns to the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788:

    '…I say our privileges and rights are in danger. …the new form of Government … will … effectually … oppress and ruin the people…. In some parts of the plan before you, the great rights of freemen are endangered, in other parts, absolutely taken away…. There will be no checks, no real balances, in this Government: What can avail your specious imaginary balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances? …And yet who knows the dangers that this new system may produce: they are out of the sight of the common people: They cannot foresee latent consequences.... I see great jeopardy in this new Government.'67

    "In contrast to the federalists’ failed predictions, this and nearly everything the anti-federalists forecast about the Constitution has come true [even after the Bill of Rights was added]...."

    Today's America is reaping the inevitable ever-intensifying whirlwind resulting from the wind sown by the constitutional framers and fanned by today's hoodwinked Christians and patriots who have been bamboozled into believing today's whirlwind can be dissipated by appealing to the wind responsible for spawning the whirlwind.

    For more, see online Chapter 3 "The Preamble: We the People vs. Yahweh" of "Bible Law vs, the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective" at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt3.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. "It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence."

    Does the existence of God or the immaterial require the idea of a universal? That is how Plato and Aristotle explained it, but I don't that is the only way to support an immaterial realm.

    Example, I can picture a triangle in my mind. That is an immaterial image that only exists in my mind. My brain is involved in the process of producing the image but the image isn't contained in my brain and does not consist of my brain.

    Also, that image isn't necessarily a universal Platonic form. His forms were perfect and ideal. The image in my mind doesn't have to be that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Does the existence of God or the immaterial require the idea of a universal?"

      When it comes to the existence of God *requiring* anything...too big for my britches. Given that He existed before there was anything, one might answer no.

      But He is also considered the perfect form of the good. Do we need a perfect form of the good for there to be God? I don't know.

      It seems that the early church fathers embraced Plato's concepts, and I believe this idea has continued in the Eastern Church. While more Aristotelian, the Western Church seems to hold to this also. I will assume that all of these held to this for good reason. I may not have this exactly right, but pretty close, I think.

      Delete
    2. Salaam friends,

      How far does this problem go? Why does this emerge in the West, to then take hold of everyone else from there?

      "The only redemption lies in restraint imposed by idea; but our ideas, if they are not to worsen the confusion, must be harmonized by some vision. Our task is much like finding the relationship between faith and reason for an age that does not know the meaning of faith."

      The central Idea of Islam is that everything derives from the One. "To believe in Destiny and good and bad both come from Him", to be as explicit as possible at all levels that it is simply impossible to Innovate past the Dao. Even degeneracy and dissolution are part of it, if we are to come back to Traditional ideas of cycles away from rational evolutionary linear progress narratives, all things must come to their close, and by doing so their self fulfillment.

      Ancestor alignment is an important part of the story here. To be connected with both our alpha-primal-origins, and omega-ultimate-completion. But if one's Father's greatness is connected to killing or eating/assimilating one's Grandmother, business as usual for the past 200 or even 2000 years might be problematic. The rebellion and anxiety fueled innovation of the next generation away from the last, ad nauseum, shouldn't then be a surprise.

      In Islam, we understand that true Prophets of the One, messages adapted for the time and predilections, but equal in Idea to the final Prophet (pbuh) were sent to every single Nation and Peoples. Islam allows me to be more Chinese than before I knew I was Muslim. The same happened to Shaykh Tim Winter in regards to his Britishness. Only the One allows Plurality to exist, one way to assess the strength and completeness of an (or the) Idea.

      Delete
    3. Dear friends,

      How far does this problem go? Why does this emerge in the West, to then take hold of everyone else from there?

      The book's conclusion:
      "The only redemption lies in restraint imposed by idea; but our ideas, if they are not to worsen the confusion, must be harmonized by some vision. Our task is much like finding the relationship between faith and reason for an age that does not know the meaning of faith."

      From Thomas Cleary's introduction to his translation of the Quran:

      "One aspect of Islam that is unexpected and yet appealing to the post-Christian secular mind is the harmonious interplay of faith and reason. Islam does not demand unreasoned belief. Rather, it invites intelligent faith, growing from observation, reflection and contemplation, beginning with nature and what is around us. Accordingly, antagonism between religion and science such as that familiar to Westerners is foreign to Islam."

      The central Idea of Islam is that everything derives from the One. "To believe in Destiny and good and bad both come from Him", to be as explicit as possible at all levels that it is simply impossible (to borrow from C.S. Lewis) to Innovate past the Dao. Even degeneracy and dissolution are part of it, if we are to come back to Traditional ideas of cycles away from rational evolutionary linear progress narratives, all things must come to their close, and by doing so their self fulfillment, to begin anew.

      Ancestor alignment is an important part of the story here. To be connected with both our alpha-primal-origins, and omega-ultimate-completion. But if one's Father's greatness is connected to killing or eating/assimilating one's Grandmother, business as usual for the past 200 or even 2000 years might be problematic. The rebellion and anxiety fueled innovation of the next generation away from the last, ad nauseum and increasing with speed each time, shouldn't then be a surprise.

      In Islam, the Book states that true Prophets of the One, with messages adapted for the time and predilections, but equal in Idea to the final Prophet (pbuh), were sent to every single Nation and Peoples. Hence Islam allows me to be more Chinese than before I knew I was Muslim. The same happened to Shaykh Tim Winter in regards to his Britishness. Only the One allows Plurality to exist, one way to assess the strength and completeness of an (or the) idea in the form it is encapsulated, and it's appropriateness for existing temporal qualities and conditions.

      And yet this classical, primoridally connected Islam is very much the exception now. It's revival is very much driven by European convert a scholars, like the one aforementioned. The weakness and power of the West will both play out in how things fulfill themselves.

      Delete
    4. "How far does this problem go? Why does this emerge in the West, to then take hold of everyone else from there?"

      The west drew a line between the natural and supernatural, the physical and spiritual, philosophy and theology. The west created this distinction of "religion," as something separate and apart.

      The west then exported this idea to much of the rest of the world.

      As to any statements about Islam, I am not qualified.

      Delete
    5. "The west drew a line between the natural and supernatural, the physical and spiritual, philosophy and theology. The west created this distinction of "religion," as something separate and apart"

      Agreed. Now to examine the origin of this. If all springs from Principle, this was not something the West just woke up one day and decided to do. Ideas have consequences, which means Ideas have their origins.

      "As to any statements about Islam, I am not qualified."

      Fair enough, I cannot recommend a thoughtful man as yourself to jump in more highly though. Examining Islam allows one to examine the West as not just a fish that can't see the sea. It is thoroughly Eastern but unlike say Daoist and Hinduism is of the same lineage as Christianity, and directly critical (hopefully in a brotherly kind of way, at best) of its core theology and the fruits of it.

      Delete
    6. "This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. …the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him."

      Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard University commencement address in 1978

      A good examinations of this falling off of the west is here:

      https://mises.org/wire/cost-enlightenment

      Delete
  3. "I could write two-thousand words on this alone; instead, I will offer only seven: sheeple, milk cows, lambs led to slaughter. This is the condition of man today, no matter how much “land of the free” junk is shoveled down his throat."

    This statement has become crystal clear in light of the public's response to the Corona flu. Speaking generally of society; no one understands economics, no one understands how to critically think about news and situations, no one knows how to take all factors of a situation into account to base wise action on, etc.

    We are sheep. The elites are blind, deaf, and dumb shepards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I keep asking myself how much of this is "normal" and how much is the resukt of decades, centuries of dumbing down. I mean, surely at any one point in time the majority of mankind was conposed of fools. What is it exactly that makes today's fools especially bad?

      Not a rhetorical question, and I think I know the answer - my guess is that the fools today are unchecked and even in charge. But it's something worth pondering.

      Delete
  4. [quote]
    Someone said: “There is something I have forgotten.”

    Rumi replied: There is one thing in this world
    that must never be forgotten. If you were to forget
    all else, but did not forget that, then you
    would have no reason to worry. But if you performed
    and remembered everything else, yet forgot
    that one thing, then you would have done
    nothing whatsoever.

    It is just as if a king sent you to the country to
    carry out a specific task. If you go and accomplish
    a hundred other tasks, but do not perform that
    particular task, then it is as though you performed
    nothing at all. So, everyone comes into this world
    for a particular task, and that is their purpose. If
    they do not perform it, then they will have done
    nothing.

    You say, “Look at all the work I do accomplish,
    even if I do not perform that task.” You
    weren’t created for those other tasks! It is just as
    if you were given a sword of priceless Indian steel,
    such as can only be found in the treasuries of
    kings, and you were to treat it as a butcher’s knife
    for cutting up putrid meat, saying, “I am not letting
    this sword stand idle, I am using it in so many
    useful ways.” Or it is like taking a solid gold bowl
    to cook turnips in, when a single grain of that
    gold could buy a hundred pots. Or it is as if you took a Damascene dagger of the finest temper to
    hang a broken gourd from, saying, “I am making
    good use of it. I am hanging a gourd on it. I am
    not letting this dagger go to waste.” How foolish
    that would be! The gourd can hang perfectly well
    from a wooden or iron nail whose value is a mere
    farthing, so why use a dagger valued at a hundred
    pounds? —Discourses of Rumi
    [end quote]

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "It Is What It Is"

      But what is it? What is the purpose of man? What is our target at which to aim?

      There is only one place of which I know that gives a definitive answer, an answer outside of man's control.

      Delete
  5. Mr Weaver's case appears more than sound, and his book was very well received... and it didn't do much it seems to check the trends he saw in 1948.

    Perhaps he saw the problem of relativism and the tendencies of the Left, but failed to see what powers them. And to be consistent, the answer must also come back to Principle, and thus the way our conceptualisation of that fails in areas to account for the whole.

    It's very much like a battle between polytheism and monotheism. It has been observed that the Renaissance was like Western Paganism's revenge against Christianity. But what was vitiating this vengeance? From whence did this passion come from, and why does it seem to keep coming back most especially in the West?

    The Left is enamoured with looking outside of the Western tradition/ancestry for answers. Confucius advised it is presumptuous to pay dues to the ancestors of another before one's own. Nevertheless, for the Right to read this as a Sign to reflect (if not swallow at face value) on seems wise.

    ReplyDelete