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| -Great Cultural Revolution |
| The Wall Between Civilization And Our Innate Savagery Is Weakening |
| 2021-04-10 |
| [The Federalist] Civilization is difficult. Civilization is especially difficult if it means not just political stability and material advancement, but also a decent moral order. We’re all born into this world as tiny barbarians. Without care, we will grow to be larger, more dangerous barbarians. The murder of Mohammad Anwar, an immigrant working as an UberEats driver, allegedly by two teenage girls attempting to carjack him, is a case in point. Following the fatal accident, video footage shows one of the accused girls complaining that her phone was still in the wrecked car. A man was dead or dying next to her, apparently by her hand, and she was focused on retrieving her technological bauble. Unfortunately, this horrible event is already receding from our consciousness, slipping out of the headlines and away from our attention. Still, it’s worth more reflection before it fades away, as it shows the frailty of our modern hopes of taming the savagery that lies within us, and the need to remember where our real hope lies. To begin with, the event illustrates that science cannot save us. Surrounded by material abundance and wondrous gadgetry, human depravity still finds a way. Having enough is not sufficient to make us good. Indeed, humans will often commit evil acts simply out of boredom. Ironically, contained within innumerable texts, podcasts, and videos, the phone the accused was so concerned about retrieving provided free access to the moral wisdom of the ages. Yet, the availability of moral teaching is insufficient to inculcate virtue — indeed, without guidance, we lack even the rudimentary virtue needed to know that we are morally deficient and have much to learn and practice. Children need personal instruction and examples to develop into good men and women, but our culture no longer shares the same moral vision. Morality is, of course, always contested to some degree, but ours is particularly an age of fractured moral consensus and seemingly intractable moral disagreements. Those who mourn what they see as moral decline must recognize that many symbols and rituals of the older consensus were losing power even before they were discarded, and they will not be efficacious if restored. Official but superficial school prayers, observing the national anthem before games, and other civic or religious ceremonies are no longer representative of a united moral and social order. The modern illusion that we can leave people to develop their own moral codes is fading, and the need for a shared understanding is becoming clear. Thus, a new moral order is attempting to assert itself — the still-cooking stew of wokeness, intersectional ideology, critical theory, and left-wing social justice claims. Though it lacks a settled name, it makes bold claims about being able to identify and address the evils the plague us. Unfortunately, while this ideology is a poisonous substitute that erodes society, it has, nonetheless, captured much of our leading institutions as well as America’s upper class. In particular, it is in control of the education system. What we teach children is largely a function of who is doing the teaching, and teachers are increasingly the acolytes of the new moral order. They may not be a majority, but few are willing to resist their programs and priorities. Among their priorities is bringing demon worship into public schools. When we see, California’s new mandatory ethnic studies program includes prayers to Aztec gods — or, to be more accurate, to Aztec demons — who were worshipped by human sacrifice, including torturing children to death, we’re reminded civilization is no guarantee of good. While human sacrifice is not (yet) part of the curriculum, its designers are open about wanting to reverse the replacement of native gods by Christianity. Whatever we call this ideology, it is leading to depravity, not virtue. This embrace of evil is, as Cameron Hilditch notes, an attempt to out-Christian Christianity itself, taking Christian concern for the downtrodden to the point of sympathy for the devil. This ideology is not particularly coherent. The Aztecs, after all, were imperialists who enslaved and murdered the peoples around them, which made it easy for the Spanish conquistadors to recruit indigenous allies. To mourn the demise of the Aztecs’s bloodthirsty gods is to take sides against the indigenous people sacrificed to those gods. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #8 We had a good run Nice while it lasted |
| Posted by: Waldemar Thrating6631 2021-04-10 14:47 |
| #7 While human sacrifice is not (yet) part of the curriculum Actually, that is exactly what abortion is. It is just an aesthetic form of dead babies in the alley, or thrown off of a cliff, or placed in a bronze oven. Purposefully exposing the elderly infirm to disease in order to save money is right there too. How about destroying one's current and future livihood, banishing them to poverty and abuse for the rest of their days, and probably their children as well, to make a social point? |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2021-04-10 14:04 |
| #6 Thanks Skid, the VDH article was superb! |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2021-04-10 13:41 |
| #5 a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived Those who are themselves deceitful make up the greatest proportion (by far) of people who are ready to be deceived. Heedlessness, ignorance and selfcenteredness also play a major role. |
| Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 2021-04-10 13:10 |
| #4 The Thin Veneer of American Civilization |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2021-04-10 09:39 |
| #3 /\ That's because everything moves from order to entropy, even civilization. Yes, somewhat obvious but seldom mentioned, "moth and rust doth corrupt". It would appear to the natural order, unless corrective measures are taken. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2021-04-10 07:33 |
| #2 many symbols and rituals of the older consensus were losing power even before they were discarded That's because everything moves from order to entropy, even civilization. To keep anything from entropy, force is required. In nature, it can be gravitation or the strong forces. In society, it is violence backed by the majority's will. How have the moslems kept their fundamental values the same for centuries? The day the majority starts self-righteous pansying about and entertaining cucks with boo hoo hoo theories about empowerment and emancipation, chaos gains a foothold. It then advances onward, until everyone from the common criminal to the satanist pedophile has been 'emancipated'. I'm all for restoration of the Christian ethic, of nationalist pride, but it's usually a tool in the hands of suicidally inactive masochists and thumb twiddlers. What's required is not more ambiguous concepts of morality, but selective unfairness toward the recidivist, the criminal, the one who think 'anything goes' and 'nothing is sacred'. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2021-04-10 05:36 |
| #1 Spare the rod and spoil the child. You can't make silk purses out of sow's ears. “How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.” ― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince “Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2021-04-10 05:02 |