The comment-thread to my recent post about Joe Biden’s fawning tribute to the deceased thug George Floyd turned in some interesting directions.
Among them was the observation that Christianity was no longer able to serve as the scaffolding that once built, and braced up, Western civilization. Was this a failing of Christianity itself?
I remarked that I was not convinced of this:
Was Richard Coeur de Lion weakened by Christianity? Was Charlemagne? Was Martel? Was Joan of Arc? Was Eisenhower? Were they fighting for what Nietzsche called a “slave morality”?
What I see is the late stage of a corrosive process, beginning in the Enlightenment (or perhaps even with the early Nominalists), of a radicalization of doubt that slowly became a “universal acid” that has now eaten away all belief in any transcendent metaphysics and objectively existing order. Every tradition, every moral intuition, any natural understanding of category and hierarchy, now must be hauled into the dock to justify its existence. This is a thing that cannot be done; it is an endless, regressive quest to prove, not our theorems, but our axioms themselves.
Christianity with its axioms removed turns the great civilization of the West into nothing more than a rotting “skin suit”, worn by savages who have nothing else to clothe themselves with. The stench of its decomposition reeks in our nostrils.
Our friend and commenter “Jacques” then joined in with a penetrating question of his own:
I agree that we’re in a late stage of a corrosive process, but there’s something else going too. The corrosive doubt is close to universal but not fully. And, in some weird way, it’s accompanied by a perverse creativity. A new system of fanatically held beliefs has been developing. They’re never doubted. It’s basically illegal to doubt them.
Take the example of Biden’s disgusting little sermon about “George Floyd”. The message is that the most obviously worthless and evil people in society are not only entirely blameless victims of oppression, but positively angelic; they’re the most noble, beautiful, inspiring people. Whatever they do (including the worst violent crimes) is acceptable or even good because they do it. And behind that message is the axiomatic belief in some lunatic concept of “equality”. Since Floyd is a thoroughly despicable person, we have to now believe that despicable things are good, or no worse than good things. (Otherwise, we’d have to think that some people are inferior to others.)
We’ve now reached the point where our sick commitment to “equality” leads to an explicit celebration of obvious evil and degeneracy and condemnation of virtue and decency. (We can’t level up but we can always level down.) In effect, Biden is telling us to accept murder, assault, theft and arson so as to avoid drawing any unflattering conclusions about certain special groups of people.
I don’t really understand it but this seems to be part of what’s happening. For some reason, the universal acid has no effect on the “equality” axiom. Everything else dissolves, but this one belief is never questioned or even acknowledged. And that one axiom, unconstrained by any others, seems to be a big factor in the corrosive process. Every sane belief is eventually denied because it conflicts somehow with the belief in “equality”.
But why is that? Why didn’t the Enlightenment destroy the belief in “equality”?
It might have something to do with Christianity. Or maybe “equality” is just a very useful meme in the high-low coalition you describe.
This is a terrifically important question, and I thank you, Jacques, for putting it to us. Why indeed? Here are some thoughts:
Yes, the axiom of “equality” is a powerful tool for powerful “wire-pullers“, who have no real illusions about equality, to use to gather up the masses, and the useful idiots, in their Bioleninist coalition-building. Those who seek to mobilize the mass of men in all ages of history have always known how to use envy as a weapon, and the mob is easily persuaded that they’re just as good as anybody else and nobody deserves to have it better than them.
It can also be argued that there was a radical egalitarian backlash in all Western institutions after the horrors of World War Two; a backlash that spread very deeply and rapidly.
It’s also in the nature of liberalism (as Erik von Keuhnelt-Leddihn has pointed out in his writings) to see the specter of illiberalism (i.e., intolerance) in any form of strong affirmation of particularity, of specific convictions, of natural discrimination or hierarchy. We can see already that anyone who expresses such things, from an NFL player expressing support for traditional sex-roles, to people who “notice” stubborn differences between human groups, is quickly attacked as a “Fascist” or a “Nazi.”
Finally, it could be that there is some sort of “conservation principle” at work here regarding human nature: something that simply makes it impossible for us to live without fundamental axioms, and means that when we drive the old ones out, new ones necessarily tumble in to take their place. If this is so, and I rather think that it is, then given the points above — the usefulness of egalitarianism in manipulating mass movements, the post-Holocaust backlash against the eugenic ideas that dominated the intellectual life of the progressive prewar West, liberalism’s aversion to hierarchy and qualitative discrimination, and the destruction of transcendent metaphysics by the acid of post-Enlightenment rationalistic skepsis, — then it would make sense, perhaps, for a deracinated civilization wearing the hollowed-out “skin-suit” of Christianity to seize on a familiar, but now misshapen, fossil of Christian egalitarianism and make that the tent-pole of its new and shabby “church”.
I’ll leave it there for tonight. As always, civil and thoughtful comments are welcome. Jacques?
P.S. Another, perhaps the simplest and best, explanation is this: if the fundamental principle of your worldview is radical doubt, and the obliteration of all objective categories and criteria for discrimination, then of course everything must be equal to everything else, because any inequality presupposes the existence (and use) of some objective standard by which it is to be measured, which our worldview forbids. (As I’ve said elsewhere, leftism is entropy.)
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Relevant: https://www.unz.com/isteve/in-this-house-we-believe-the-protestant-roots-of-wokeness
Why didn’t the Enlightenment destroy the belief in “equality”?
In 2007 I wrote an essay on Conservatism versus Liberalism (just for myself), and I attempted to answer that in a short paragraph – this is my answer:
“Liberals invoke equality to extort exceedingly loud lip service to “diversity” and “tolerance”, but the diversity they celebrate is only leftist prejudice, (anti-white – pro-black), and the choice they tolerate is only their own. In truth they dare not accept mankind’s diversity – of intellect, of ability, of behaviour, of stature, of race – because only if all are “equal” may the desperately desired autonomy-of-the-individual be hoped for. No differences at all can be tolerated, as these threaten the right to autonomy on the grounds of equality. Once admit distinction – and then hierarchy and the natural authority of superiority will arise – and universalised autonomy is curtailed. Securing “absolute” autonomy is the goal and equality is the means. This is the real driving force at liberalism’s centre: not humane concern for the brotherhood of man, but self-centred pursuit of absolute power – even if a debased humanity is the price to be paid. Universal uniformity, (predicated on the lowest common denominator, the lowest of human appetites), is the necessary and horrible conclusion of the liberal ideal. Utopian liberalism may begin with the ideal of equality but it ends in degradation, regimentation and policed conformity.”
On the use of “equality” to justify and celebrate all manner of evil, we should, I think, keep in mind the orthodox Christian belief in the existence of spiritual beings, demons or devils, who, through temptation and deceit, excel in leading man to sin. They are adept at comingling truth and falsity, of turning seemingly good things or concepts into their opposites. Needless to say, the belief in Satan and his minions is a position that rests on the acceptance of a large set of rationally defensible but probably not rationally demonstrable metaphysical propositions, some drawn from natural theology and some from revealed religion. The latter speaks of moments when the domination of these malevolent beings over mankind was inordinate, occasioning all manner of evil doings (for example, the original Fall; Sodom; and, pertinently, the worshipping of false “gods” in ancient Israel [Amos 2:4, Deut. 8:19, 2 Kings 17:15, Jer. 11:10, Ezek. 20:16]). When positively wicked persons (murderers, perverts, liars, thieves, etc.) and acts (aborting babies in the final moments of pregnancy, destroying the bodies of children, for example) are celebrated as models of goodness should we not at least consider that of the Father of Lies has infected the minds and hearts of millions of our countrymen?
I’m inclined to blame the inevitable ratchet of liberalism, to which even American conservatives must bow. After all, America’s own founding document declares that all men are created equal; who could possibly gainsay that?
I think Christianity has this egalitarian germ as well, with its promise of boundless redemption. The Christianity of the Emperor Constantine was inevitably going to yield to the Christianity of St. Francis.
I’d say rabid nationalism played a role in the death of the West as well. Europeans literally blew each other to smithereens in two World Wars.
I’m not up to the task of detailing all of the gritty details, but I would like to point to the work of Rene Girard again, in reference to the notion that “Christianity was no longer able to serve as the scaffolding that once built, and braced up, Western civilization.”
In this 2009 article he wrote for First Things he writes this: “Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse.” (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/08/on-war-and-apocalypse)
It is well worth reading in it’s entirety, as are his other works. They elaborate in great detail the effect that the demystification of religion effected by the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ has had on humanity’s centuries following down to our own.
I wish I were better prepared to advance a case for this, but I’m just plum tuckered out from other stuff and can’t rise to the occasion. If interested, please read the link and perhaps a discussion will develop. I guess the take away I’d like to offer is, it ain’t over till it’s over, and God will most certainly get the last word, as well as the first Logos.
These are all interesting points and all seem true.
Keith: I think your explanation makes a lot of sense, but is there a contradiction or paradox?
On the one hand, you’re saying that the real motive is the wish for absolute autonomy of the individual. (For each to be entitled to autonomy, there can be no relevant distinctions of worth or capacity.) On the other hand, in the first part of your quotation you’re saying that what the “liberals” are really aiming for is power over their enemies. They say they value “diversity” and “tolerance” (etc) but really they’re just celebrating their own prejudices and precluding any choices they don’t like.
If they don’t really value diversity or tolerance, and simply seek to impose their rigid value system on everyone else, how can they (really) value the autonomy of all individuals? Wouldn’t it be the case, instead, that they value only the autonomy of those who agree with them, and seek to destroy the autonomy of others?
I did have a further thought along these lines. What does “equality” mean to these people? If we look at how they use the concept, it reduces to a series of oppressed-oppressor distinctions. (Some are more equal than others.) “Equality” matters to them only to the extent that some supposedly less-than-equal group is then supposedly entitled to do violence against the supposedly more-than-equal. Thus, “black lives matter” officially means only that people are “equal” but in practice it means that blacks are entitled to steal and murder and whites are not even entitled to disapprove.
So maybe the Enlightenment did destroy the axiom of “equality” in that progressives have never really believed in the equal moral standing of all people (despite using the word-shape “equality”). For them, “equality” means sacred violence against the scapegoat (a la Girard).
But even if something like that were true, we could ask why the Enlightenment didn’t destroy whatever unexamined moral axiom is driving their behavior. Why do the Enlightenment people still have some kind of furious moral passion that can inspire such violence? Why do they make any value judgments at all?
Malcolm,
I like your simplest explanation. There’s surely something right about that: The default is “equality” because the default is to doubt.
But there’s still a mystery. The idea that “equals” should be treated or valued equally is itself an “objective moral standard”. A true nihilist might agree that A and B are exactly alike in every respect, but deny that this is ever any reason for treating A and B similarly. Someone who truly rejects all distinctions should also reject the distinction between (seemingly) good reasons and bad reasons, or reasons and non-reasons. But “egalitarians” don’t do this. And they seem to get very upset when A and B are not treated exactly equally — as if there were some moral categories which are objectively binding on us and must be respected.
I guess an even simpler explanation could be that we’re all insane ;)
Jacques: Yes, to an outside observer, there is a contradiction in their belief – but not to liberals. According to them all men are the same, so the “emancipated” would choose “correctly”. They are so self-absorbed, that they cannot really comprehend the “distinctly other” that “difference” implies. Complacently they believe that they, themselves, are the universal to whom all will be conformed if all are equal. So its not that they “seek to destroy the autonomy of others”, but that they cannot properly conceive of autonomous others, who are actually different from themselves. Their “choices” are the “good reality” and any opposition to that is simply absurd and to be destroyed.
“The corrosive doubt is close to universal but not fully. …A new system of fanatically held beliefs has been developing.” – Is this not simply the same old Lucifer-inspired fantasy of rebellion, using whatever is fashionable in a particular age to clothe the rebellion? It seems to me that the“oppressed-oppressor” argument points right back to the first rebel. This was Satan’s justification for inventing disobedience to the Creator – God was the oppressor and Lucifer / Satan, the oppressed. Satan’s unhinged ambition to be equal to God, remains fallen man’s desire too. However, there can, of course, only be one God – the one who is the source of the Creation – and so it is never really about “equality”, it is always about destroying the superior. And rebellious men are simply Satan’s dupes in his war against God.
Equality retains its rallying power to the rebellious because, short-sightedly, they can only see the dissolving of superior authority, and their consequent attainment of independence. They fail to see that in fact, equality only produces universal uniformity on the lowest common level – with no freedom or independence at all! A horrible hell on earth, in which the most ruthless imposes his tyranny on all who prove weaker – which is the Satanic vision.