One of the most abject failures of the secular left is due to the disasters of both its most ambitious forms - Marxism - and its lower energy forms in secular liberalism. Marxism - totally misidentified as anything other than an alternative form of the most violent of gangster government - lies discredited by the history of Marxist government in the 20th and 21st centuries. Its mountain range of murder victims is a match for its supposed equivalents on the "right" Nazism, fascism, capitalism, certainly on a per-capita basis. You have to count Marxism's death rate in the same class as European feudalism in the Western hemisphere - which is certainly as large though slower - and the Mongol empire which may be the aptest comparison to human organized murder in the age of technology.
The American secular left is wedded to a number of self-defeating and suicidal fads and fashions, Marxism*, other forms of materialism, scientism, some pretty goofy and clearly anti-leftist forms of consumerism**, whatever Hollywood's and other entertainment industry "lefts" are peddling these days.
The academic "left", when it isn't overtly practicing the above have the decided tendency to go all timid and unaspiring and unimpressive in the ridiculous and ineffective modesty of their intentions and aspirations. I think they've been talked out of that by the dismal, discouraging, dispiriting*** "human nature" presented by a social-scientistic-materialistic view of what people are and what they always will be. Modernism, scientific materialist views of human beings and societies present a more radically static view of the possibility of change than, perhaps, even classical paganism or something like reigned in ancient Egypt under the Pharaonic system which, notably, God freed the Children of Israel from with the help of Moses.
You can contrast that with this ambitious list out of Hans Kungs short and surprisingly good, non-scholarly book, Why I Am Still A Christian
This basic model of essential values in individual and social life does not of course aim merely at providing internal, spiritual, and mental comfort. It involves a conversion of the heart; a new attitude which can change the world! It makes actually possible what so many are calling for today, with the prevailing lack of direct, lack of norms, lack of meaning; with the prevailing drug addition, criminality, and violence. It make actually possible what is so important for both the religion and politics of Christians, for their social and economic policies, for their educational and development policies. If I can set it out: this Jesus Christ and his Spirit, who is the energy and power of God himself, makes actually possible
- new awareness. He makes possible a standpoint beside which many others can be judged. He requires a new, more humane attitude to life, and a new life-style itself. As individuals and together, we may and can live differently, more authentically , more humanely, when we have this Christ Jesus before us as a specific example for our fundamental relationships with others, society, the world of God. This new attitude gives us identity and integrity in our individual lives, and a confident independence and motivation to act in today's world.
- new motivations: From his "theory" and "practice" we can deduce new motives for individual and social action. In his light, it is possible to answer those questions with which we started out and which are so difficult to answer purely rationally: why we should not act in one particular way but in another, why we should not be wicked and inhumane but should be humane and good, why we should not hate but love, why we should not promote violence and war but should affirm non-violence and promote peace. In the light of Jesus Christ it is possible to answer even the question of Freud, with all his brilliant insight, could not answer: why we should still be honest, considerate and kind whenever possible, even if this is to our disadvantage and we are made to suffer through the carelessness and brutality of others.
- new attitudes: In his Spirit we can develop and maintain new, reliable insights and attitudes. We can find in him help - not only occasionally but dependably - to form new attitudes with all the required subtleties, which are capable of guiding individual and social behavior successfully: attitudes of unpretentious commitment to our fellow human being, identification with the underprivileged, and opposition to unjust institutions; attitudes of gratitude, freedom, magnanimity, unselfishness, and joy, as well as consideration, pardon and service; attitudes which prove themselves in difficult situations, in preparedness for sacrifice, in the fullness of self-giving and in renunciation - sometimes when not absolutely necessary in dedication to a greater cause.
- new action: By his Spirit we are enabled to act on a larger or smaller scale, not only in general programs for social change, but also in detailed, practical way for the benefit of individuals and society.
- new aims: Through his Spirit there comes what so many people miss today - the meaning and ultimate purpose of our life and our history in this last and first reality which is the consummation of humanity through God's kingdom. It is precisely this meaning and this purpose that permit us to live our present earthly lives differently; and that means live not only as a history of successes, but also as a history of suffering, for the individual and for humanity as a whole.
This last point needs to be expressed more exactly. Non-Christians often describe themselves as humanists, but we Christians too are no less humanists. The crucial test of both non-Christian humanism and Christian humanism lies in their capacity to deal with the negative aspect of reality. While it is easy enough to say that we approve of everything that is human, human,e true, good and beautiful, what if we continually come up against the inhuman, mannequin, untrue, bad, and ugly, in our individual lives and in society, and if we cannot simply talk these negative things out of existence? How then is the negative side to be dealt with?
I'll continue with this, tomorrow.
I'm tempted to, once again, go into that much disputed passage from Jurgen Habermas which I've brawled over with online atheists at length and about which they are, apparently, till lying. I do think it's clear that atheists, having a lie they've told about something exposed, exhaustively, will just keep repeating the lie you've refuted. They do, indeed, have a lot to do with the vulgar materialism of Trump and his supporters - especially the "evangelicals" whose materialism is exposed as obviously as rotten peaches on my sister's peach tree. Note that the "modernity" that Habermas attributes to Christianity is an egalitarian-democratic interpretation of the word that I would say is decidedly not the same thing that I've critisized. I think it's more the minority POV among modernists than the majority of modernists. Modernism has been, mostly, destructive of egalitarian democracy. A yen for the new and modern, to be seen as up-to-date the consumerist part of that, has certainly been a disaster for the environment. I'll go with Jack Levine on that.
* One of the most disheartening things I've seen in this latest run for the Democratic nomination by Bernie Sanders and, to a lesser extent, the enthusiasm about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election was how many socialists still frame their "socialism" in Marx's or Marxists' framing which is anti-democratic state-socilism, Leninism etc. Nothing is more discrediting of socialism than to tie it to the corpse of dialectical materialism. That is one of the reasons I think that for the promotion of "democratic socialism" nothing is more counterproductive than to use the word "socialism" for it.
** I was thinking of how shocked I was when I first looked at that flower of the hippy period, The Whole Earth Catalogue and The Last Whole Earth Catalogue, it was nothing but a Sears-Roebuck Wish Book for tech-back-to-the-lander play lefties - AND IT WAS SATURATED WITH THE MOST VULGAR KIND OF CONSUMERIST ENTREPRENEUR BS PLAYING HIPPY. The idea that anything that is the focus of fashion is not going to go that way is absurd.
*** Literally, there is nothing more dispiriting than atheist-scientistic-materialism. How could anyone possibly avoid being discouraged by it for anything but the violent, cruelly insouciant self-indulgence that is the plague of humanity. Something like that entered into the literature of atheist materialism as early as we have records of that in Carvarka an Roman materialism. There is nothing to build egalitarian democracy out of in it. There is everything to build Trumpism in it.
NOTE: One of the problems with the ideology of modernism is, as dear old Jack Levine noted in the masthead of this blog, modernism is an ideology of what's new. What becomes of modernism when that modernism gets old? As modernism as an ideology is old enough to have had the modernism of the past become old, not new, not "modern" what, then, of that modernism, what might be styled as the "original" or more original, or more nearly original modernism as it is succeeded by newer modernism? "Post-modernism" implies that "modernism" ended, so that doesn't exactly work as a designation, if "modernism" is continuous. "More modernist"? Mod modern? Or maybe in the spirit of one of the most obvious practices of it, production for sale, we should have model years of modernism?
The problem of modernism, for me, started when I found out how many of its major figures and heroes were huge fans of violent, genocidal, dictatorial regimes, fascism, Nazism, Marxism (though Marxists, absorbed in their own, Romanitic German ideological obsessions, didn't make very good candidates for modernists). It continued as I realized that as with the "enlightenment" it was not only not as sold, its intellectual foundations were a guarantee that it would end up badly.
"** I was thinking of how shocked I was when I first looked at that flower of the hippy period, The Whole Earth Catalogue and The Last Whole Earth Catalogue, it was nothing but a Sears-Roebuck Wish Book for tech-back-to-the-lander play lefties - AND IT WAS SATURATED WITH THE MOST VULGAR KIND OF CONSUMERIST ENTREPRENEUR BS PLAYING HIPPY. The idea that anything that is the focus of fashion is not going to go that way is absurd.
ReplyDeleteWell, in the LWEC, Brand did start off with the sentence: "We are as gods, so we might as well get good at it." If there was any spiritualism in it, it was spirit reached through material comforts. the whole thing really was Amazon before Amazon, but with a bit more direct access to retailers.
Anyway, I only read it for the story...which I never finished, come to think of it.
I forgot all about the story. I don't remember if I finished it, though I seem to recall it ended in a wedding. It is astonishing how little inclined I am to see if it's been pirated online.
DeleteI believe it was Stuart Brand who shocked me by presenting Israel as a capitalist-entrepreneur paradise, I'd grown up believing it was a socialist paradise. That was before I found out how some of the Marxist kibbutzes were probably the most profoundly antisemetic polities in the so-called free world. I was disillusioned with Israel, the vulgar consumerism of the LWEC impressed me almost immediately.
We found the back-to-the-landers quite amusing, especially when they lectured us about things they just found out about but which we yokels grew up with. I didn't suspect they were going to be reliable lefties, it's remarkable how many of the hippiest of them became real-estate brokers and other kinds of crooks.
It was the Catholic left types around here, the U of C, even some of the Episcopalians and Methodists who kept faith with traditional American liberalism, hardly any of them people of fashion.
Maybe I'm mixing it up in almost 50 year old memories with Trout Fishing In America, or maybe In Watermelon Sugar. Though I think one of those ended in an abortion. It's funny, though they were so much alike, I remember Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers and The Favorite Game more clearly.
DeleteYech. I'm plumbing some of the lower depths of what other people consider nostalgia.
I still have my copy of LWEC. It's a remarkable historical document of what the "Hippie" movement was really about. As you say, a lot of clueless urbanites telling rural folk how to get back to the land and set their souls free. There is something very American in that desire to return to original conditions, to reset civilization to year zero and get it "right" this time. And of course, as always, you have to do it with the right, carefully vetted and selected, consumer goods.
DeleteI remember being momentarily fascinated by the idea of anarchism after reading Robert Wolff's book, In Defense of Anarchism I talked about it with one of my university teachers. She said, "Why would anyone want to go back to the beginning as if we haven't learned anything?" I wonder if that might have been the idea I heard in college that has stuck with me the longest. She was my Russian teacher, an anti-Marxist. She usually taught Spanish, which I should have taken instead. I believe I was interested in Mussorgsky's songs that year. Never learned enough to make any difference.
DeleteOr was it his book "The Abortion" that ended in an abortion? See what an impression that crap made on me? I didn't even remember that as an independent book.
DeleteThere was a wedding in the Catalog story. I vaguely remember that, but no more than that. And my copy is falling apart, I don't dare open it anymore.
ReplyDeleteI lived Brautigan. In high school. I was a lot younger then, and he seemed revolutionary.
Did I mention I was a lot younger then?
Me too. I doubt my self back then would believe who I am now, it's easier to remember how foolish I was. I can't understand people who want to live in their past can stand it. I know a guy in his 70s who only listens to white-boy folk and pop music of the late 50s and 60s over and over again. Someone in real life, not that eternal prep-school, E-ton.
DeleteI seem to remember writing a paper where I quoted a passage from In Watermelon Sugar and contrasting it with a passage from Winesburg Ohio, showing how Anderson was more progressive in the teens than Brautigan was in the 60s.