first principles a return to humanity's shared tradition

We generally assign people with “modern” values to the Left, and people with more “traditional” values to the Right.. Therefore, he idealized the hypothetical man-in-nature, free of soc

.397 5.50 x 8.50

F IRST P RINCIPLESexamines the flaws and broken promises of

mod-ernism, and hopes for renewal in traditionalism.

The central spiritual conflict of our time is the struggle between

modernism and traditionalism, and the debate over which should be our

guide Many modern conflicts appear intractable because they are

hotspots in a larger cold war between entirely different frames of

refer-ence Only by unearthing and examining the divergent frames can we

begin to see which will work better for us.

“Thy will be done” versus “My will be done”: according to First

Principles, modernism and traditionalism differ principally in where they

locate the source of values Modernism believes in an internal, subjective

source; it appeals to the ego, and its promises have captured the popular

imagination; but its actual practice reveals its destructiveness.

Traditionalism believes in an external, objective source: “God” (or gods).

Traditionalism is not about traditions, per se — preserving old ways or

keeping old rituals — but about dedicating ourselves to Objective

Reality’s plan.

Many people sense that something is deeply wrong; First Principles is

a tool that can help them clarify the problem Part One defines and

con-trasts modernism and traditionalism; Part Two explores the

contradic-tions that make modernism destructive; and Part Three examines and

advocates the set of values that C S Lewis identifies as common to all

humanity.

* Donald Foy is a teacher at an alternative school in Wisconsin Seeing

the sad effects modernism has had on today’s family, he has seized upon

the principles set out by C S Lewis as an antidote to relativism in a

diverse world First Principles will be a welcome guide for people who

want to hold the line against modernism’s effects in their community and

A Return to Humanity's Shared Traditions

Don Foy

Algora Publishing

No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by

Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)

may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the

express written permission of the publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-87586-259-4 (hardcover : alk paper) — ISBN 0-87586-258-6 (trade paper : alk paper) — ISBN 0-87586-202-0 (Ebook)

1 Values 2 Ethical relativism 3 United States—Moral conditions 4 lization, Modern—Moral and ethical aspects I Title

and the spread of violence, necessitated some new ideal and hope to give men consolation in their suffering and courage in their toil; an age of power gave way to an age of faith Not till wealth and pride should return in the Renaissance would reason reject faith, and abandon heaven for utopia But

if, thereafter, reason should fail, and science should find no answers, but should multiply knowledge and power without improving conscience or purpose; if all utopias should brutally collapse in the changeless abuse of the weak by the strong: then men would understand why once their ances-tors, in the barbarism of those early Christian centuries, turned from sci-ence, knowledge, power, and pride, and took refuge for a thousand years in humble faith, hope, and charity

Will Durant

“The beauty parlor’s filled with sailors,

The circus is in town”

Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row”

I WHERE IS THE CONFLICT? 1

II ROUSSEAU, TWO LEWISES, AND MOUNT OLYMPUS 15III INVERSIONS, GANGS, AND GULLIVER 31

IV “HOBBS WAS RIGHT” 43

V PINKER’S UNLOVELY LIST 55

VI THE SELLING OF PERSONAL GROWTH DIVORCE 65VII WHY MARRIAGE DOESN’T TRANSLATE 81VIII THE INVISIBLE HAND AS PICKPOCKET 95

Of all the conflicts that embroil the world today, the one that holds the darkest threat of destruction, but also the brightest promise for creation, is the conflict between modern and traditional values Sometimes the conflict is obvious, as in the debate over abortion; sometimes it is hidden, complicating disputes which appear to be ethnic, regional, or national.

America, in particular, shows confusion between its traditionalist and its innovative values In the United States, we tend to see our biggest divide as being between the Left — the Democrats and their various allies — and the Right — the Republicans and their various allies We generally assign people

with “modern” values to the Left, and people with more

“traditional” values to the Right The truth is not so simple For instance, the televised sex, violence and crudeness that traditionalists often decry is broadcast because of marketing decisions made in corporate board rooms, a very Right-Republican environment This runs against the view that the Left is always the agent of social novelty, and the Right is always ally of traditional morality Remember too, that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and the Progressive movement of the early 1900s, both generally seen as impulses from the Left, and

resisted by the Right, got much of their start and core support from those traditional institutions — churches.

These, and other similar paradoxes, are resolved when we discard the idea that the Left is “modern,” and the Right is

“traditional.” They are both modern Neither is traditional They are both anti-tradition

If they are both modern, what do we mean by “modern”? What could the Left and the Right have in common, they seem

so antagonistic toward each other? Finally, what do we mean by

or any other over-arching institution The individual is “free,” or

“disconnected,” depending on your bias Modernism has a laissez-faire, or libertarian, spirit It aims to maximize the decision-making power of the individual, and to minimize the claims of the collective: “society.”

We call this perspective “modern,” because it is in opposition to “traditional,” but as an idea it’s not new It has been around at least since Rousseau, Blake, and Whitman Nevertheless, modernism has only gained widespread institutional acceptance in the last 40 years or so — many organizations use its rhetoric — and real mass participation in the last 25 Before that it was the province of writers, artists, philosophers, and so on — the avant-garde It is an attractive theory, rational, generous, and hopeful, but it had never been tested on a society-wide scale until now

Modernism has many sources, but one of the most important is the philosophy of the eighteenth-century French thinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau Rousseau, a rebel and a romantic figure himself, was knocked about by fortune and his

writings became the touchstone of revolutionary and social movements around the world His ideas influenced the American, French, and other nationalist and Marxist revolutions He believed that people are naturally good and cooperative, and that evil in the world comes from this natural goodness being perverted by social restrictions and institutions, not from human nature itself He was convinced that people who were free of those restrictions would be free of the distortions they cause, and would live in harmony and peace Rousseau identified human creations, not human nature, as the source of injustice Therefore, he idealized the hypothetical man-in-nature, free of social restraints: the “noble savage.” The noble savage exhibits (so Rousseau thought) all the virtues that Rousseau predicted.

The Left and Right each carry modernism’s spirit into a different area The Left emphasizes social libertarianism, and the Right emphasizes economic libertarianism The Left tends to minimize the need for social coordinators and regulators Ironically, the Left does initiate a lot of laws, but its goal is to increase individual liberty, to increase choices, often for a target group which has been determined to be unfairly restrained by prejudice, custom, or market forces Such things as anti-discrimination laws, hate crime laws, even minimum wage laws, all have this aim On the other hand, the Right tends to minimize the need for economic coordinators and regulators Its method is

to give latitude by reducing legislation The Right are the ecologists of finance “Don’t interfere with it,” they say

The Left’s social libertarianism stresses the belief that we should all be able to access and explore a variety of lifestyle options so that we will be able to discover and express our most authentic natures Furthermore, the Left believes that since we then would be “centered,” and not driven by neurotic dissatisfactions, we would relate to each other harmoniously,

peacefully Society and the world would be an aggregate of very different, but mutually satisfied and respectful, individuals Social and personal dysfunctions would tend to fade because they are the result of dishonest, fearful, inauthentic conventions Social justice and self-fulfillment are the double fruit of the

unflinchingly honest pursuit of our true selves

The Right’s economic libertarianism stresses the belief in the Free Marketplace, and our right to pursue, unhindered, our material well being as far as our talents will take us Furthermore, the Right believes that the free operation of the marketplace, through its various features for self-regulation — supply and demand, the production of goods and services to fill needs (if enough people have a need, the market will fill it because it is a market), and the equitable nature of contractual

relationships — will all keep society balanced, harmonious, and just Thus once again, the fulfillment of the individual, and the

common good, are both achieved by keeping all avenues open, and letting each individual choose which he or she wants to explore

Our perception that the Left and Right are “opposites” comes out of the conflict they have over the role of government The Right believes government should not interfere in our economic lives, the Left believes that government should

“interfere” to the extent necessary to offset the more direct impact economics has on our personal lives The Left sees money

as external to the person and somewhat arbitrary Finance should not dictate the quality of a person’s life The Right sees the economic controls and firewalls that the Left might propose

as being dangerous tamperings with the Marketplace’s adjusting nature, as well as a denial of the individual’s right to make economic choices

self-This disagreement is not to be minimized, but we should keep it in perspective; it is a conflict between two

interpretations of modernism In fact, there are signs that these interpretations are beginning to blend We live in the age of the

“boho” — the bourgeois bohemian; we see the hip financier, the business tycoon who does yoga, the high-powered lawyer who really digs the blues, and his (or her) Harley Modernism may be growing more and more unified, in tastes, at least

In politics, the distinctions between Left and Right appear

as sharp as ever; partisanship at all levels of government has become overwhelming, sometimes forcing the civic machinery to grind to a stop, but the Democrats and Republicans may be blurring in one negative way Many Americans share a growing sense that the Left and the Right are equally self-serving, impotent, even destructive, in their methods and aims Their rhetoric seems to be predictably scripted ideological responses that have little to do with our real circumstances and needs The Left promises needed social programs, but downplays or denies their cost in increased taxes, government paternalism, and bureaucratic control of our culture The Right promises material prosperity and economic independence, but downplays or denies their cost in increased corporate and commercial control

of our culture, and the environmental cost of decreased regulation on pollution and land-use

As acrimony between the two parties has escalated, the accusations of each against the other have become monuments of blame placing and doublethink This became painfully obvious during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, and the “hung” election of 2000 Meanwhile, the public feels more and more alienated

Many, maybe a majority, of Americans want a real alternative The problem is that, since the dialogue between the Democrats and the Republicans — social libertarianism and economic libertarianism — has been the only political language spoken in the U.S for generations, we have trouble imagining

what a real alternative would be What would it promise, and what would it cost? How would it work? We are like the proverbial fish in the sea that can’t conceive of what “wet” means because it has never known anything else It won’t understand

“wet” until it encounters “dry.” We’re all wet, and we still don’t know it

The limited perspective that our Left/Right paradigm condemns us to is the reason why our recent attempts at creating third parties have been confused and unsuccessful Generally, these experiments seize on a specific issue from the Left or Right’s agenda, and then expand it into an entire frame of reference The Greens have done this with the environment, and the Libertarians have done it with the idea of limited government The Reform Party’s only defined program was to be

an alternative, somehow, someway It has gotten by so far with celebrity, and independently wealthy, candidates, and a self-proclaimed “common-sense” approach to issues on a case-by-case basis This actually works, to a degree, because it allows more flexibility than the ideologically dictated programs of the Democrats and the Republicans In the long run, though, because the modernist pronouncements of our two major parties

is the only political language spoken in America, a third party

with no particular plan will end up speaking that same language

by default So it is that the Reform Party has tilted toward economic libertarianism, and has ended up looking like eccentric, or innovative (depending on your bias) Republicans, but Republicans nevertheless

Even more, not only are our modernist political philosophies unable to solve our social problems, but our modernist political philosophies are the cause of many of our

social problems This is because the thoroughgoing individualism of modernism does not give people the social or communal attitudes and tools needed to create a strong

community Thus, the more modernist we become, the more certain characteristic problems increase, and the less able we are

to solve them This has become more and more the case since about 1960

A Francis Fukuyama writes in his definitive article, “The Great Disruption,” printed in the May, 1999, Atlantic Monthly,

The perceived breakdown of social order is not a matter of nostalgia, poor memory, or ignorance about the hypocrisies of earlier ages The decline is readily measurable in statistics on crime, fatherless children, broken trust, reduced opportunities for and outcomes from education, and the like 1

Incidentally, Fukuyama’s article is not an indictment of modernism; it is actually guardedly optimistic, but it is nevertheless clear on the point just quoted

It continues,

This period [in question], roughly the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, was marked by seriously deteriorating social con-ditions in most of the industrialized world Crime and social disorder began to rise, making inner-city areas of the wealthi-est nations on earth almost uninhabitable….Marriages and births declined and divorce soared; and one out of every three children in the United States and more than half of all children

in Scandinavia were born out of wedlock….these changes…occurred over a wide range of similar countries; and they all appeared at roughly the same period in history 1

As people soon discovered, there are serious problems with

a culture of unbridled individualism, in which the breaking of rules becomes, in a sense, the only remaining rule.2

In a similar vein, Gertrude Himmelfarb says in her insightful book, One Nation, Two Cultures,

1 Fukuyama, 1999, p 56.

2 Ibidem, pp 55 & 56.

One does not have to be nostalgic for a golden age that never was to appreciate the contrast between past and present The ratio of out-of-wedlock births has increased six fold since 1960…the number of children living with one parent has risen from less than one-tenth to more than one quar-ter….It has often been observed that when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his percipient report on the break-down of the black family in 1965, the black illegitimacy ratio was only slightly higher than the white ratio is today, and con-siderably lower than it is now for the country at large.3

Senator Moynihan has encapsulated the social and cultural situation of our time in the brilliant phrase “defining deviancy down.” What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated, even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnor-mal has now been normalized….Charles Krauthammer has pro-posed a complimentary concept, “defining deviancy up.” As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant The kind of family that has been regarded for centu-ries as natural and moral…is now seen as pathological.4

Melissa Ludtke’s book, On our Own, reports that, “In 1950,

only four percent of American babies were born to mothers who were not married….fifty years later that figure is up to a third of all births.”5

There is a whole literary, cinematic, and broadcast industry devoted to “debunking” the traditional family Its intent seems to

be to prove that the “normal family” — Mom and Dad and kids

— is actually a cauldron of stupidity, oppression, and abuse; and conversely, almost any atypical family — single Mom (or Dad) and kids, homosexual couple or circle of close friends and kids

— is a center of good sense, wisdom, and love Pleasantville, 1,000 Acres, The Color Purple, The Simpsons, Fried Green Tomatoes, Married with Children, American Beauty, Cider House Rules, Dead Poets’ Society,

and many more, are all examples of this trend Some of these

3 Ibid., p 59.

4 Himmelfarb, 1999, p 25.

5 Ludke, 1997, cover flap.

works are well done and well intended, but taken as a group, they do more than simply criticize abuses; they have the effect of discrediting the family structure itself That is a structure that it

is beginning to look like we ought not do without

Aside from anecdotal success stories about atypical families

— and we don’t want to detract from any successes — experience and statistics are showing that, generally, divorce and single-parent upbringings put kids more at risk for social problems than do upbringings in two-parent families, imperfect though they may be By implying that the opposite is true, modernist art and media plot a course into social difficulties, and try to convince us that it’s progress It’s as if, for instance, we were presented with a genre of stories about police brutality, and happy communities without police The implication would

be that we would be better off without police But reality has its iron imperatives, which would soon show us how foolish such a notion would be Police brutality exists, of course, and needs to

be rooted out, but in general, the larger effect of having police is

to protect us from more widespread brutality

Continuing with examples of defining deviancy up, Himmelfarb observes,

Smoking has been elevated to the rank of vice and sin, while sexual promiscuity is tolerated as a matter of individual right and choice.6

Finally, she relates an interesting passage from Joseph Schumpeter’s 1942 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

Capitalism creates a critical frame of mind which, after having destroyed the moral authority of so many other institu-tions, in the end turns against its own; the bourgeois finds to his amazement that the rationalist attitude does not stop at

6 Himmelfarb, 1999, p 28.

the credentials of kings and popes, but goes on to attack vate property and the whole scheme of bourgeois values 7

pri-Though set in the Communist/Capitalist rhetoric of his time, Schumpeter’s comments accurately map how we got to be

a culture where, “The breaking of rules becomes…the only remaining rule.”

As of now, the crime rate and some other negative social indicators have dropped somewhat since the mid-1990s, but those declines are from a peak of several multiples of their 1960 level In addition, these indicators of social disruption may not

be as acute as in the mid-’90s, but they are noticeably more widespread They are no longer confined to areas of poverty, where they might be expected for material reasons, but they have become common in suburbs and rural areas

These trends should make us suspicious, at least, that modernism does not deliver what it promises Or, it delivers, but then some Perhaps, to be truthful, the modernist should tell us,

You are now more free than you’ve ever been before You can pursue every kind of fulfillment Find your true self, get rich, the sky’s the limit; but, if you go out at night for a quart of milk or a loaf of bread, watch your back, beware the stranger, keep out of the shadowy side streets And by the way, we have innovative counseling techniques for your distraught children Remember, they’re even more free than you are

Of course, this is facetious; there are plenty of communities, and families, and children who are faring well today Nevertheless, there are enough disasters, more than there have been in a long while, to say that they are characteristic of our age

In the nineteenth century, not every American went west to pan for gold or to homestead, but enough did to stamp that

7 Quoted in Himmelfarb, 1999, p 12.

adventurous image on that time Likewise, the automobile decals

of a leering little boy peeing, and the motto, “No Fear,” next to him, could stamp that malicious image on our time

Perhaps it’s time to revisit modernism’s one real rival and alternative, traditionalism That’s a scary thought for many; in the modernist language that we are limited to, traditionalism is a negative term It reads as, “Social oppression of the individual,”

“Hidebound resistance to change,” and, “Hypocritical promotion

of standards that its own supporters don’t live up to.” These images of traditionalism are stereotypes created during modernism’s rise to cultural dominance Like all stereotypes, there is some truth to them, but also like all stereotypes, they don’t really tell the truth

Let’s try to think outside the modernist box Let’s try a different mental template We need to consider: what is the aim

of traditionalism, and how is it different from modernism? Also, how do the shortcomings and contradictions in modernism cause us the problems already cited, and how would traditionalism try to solve them?

The primary way that modernism and traditionalism differ

is where they believe the standard that defines right and wrong, and outlines how people ought to act, is located In a sense, we might say that they differ in where they believe sacredness comes from The modernist believes that, ultimately, it comes from the self “Every person is an artist and every artist is a priest.” Each self is holy: Walt Whitman, Jackson Pollack

The essential and beloved mistake of the Rousseauian modernists is their understanding that humanity and the world are holy, but their lack of understanding that the human situation is complex, divided — poisoned, if you will — by ego and self-centeredness, which is as natural as our claim to transcendence Alan Ginsberg sings to us in “Howl”:

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole are holy! Everything is holy! Everybody’s holy! Everywhere is holy! Everyday is in eternity! Every man’s an angel!8

Well, yes But that’s only half the story The other half is mankind’s obvious shortfall from holy To ignore that shortfall is

to ignore a lot To ascribe that shortfall to our particular culture and society is to be unaware of other cultures and societies If all

is holy, then nursing a child and murdering a rival are of equal value, or for that matter, nursing a child and murdering a child Relativism’s solutions for this kind of dilemma are unconvincing

No matter what the logic tells us, we know there’s something wrong, here There is a problematic counter-current in the human soul, the human experience, human behavior Modernism doesn’t want to accept this complexity It doesn’t want to accept the self-regulation and social regulation, the “Thou shalt nots,” that this confounding complexity implies Traditionalism, on the other hand, accepts it, eyes wide open, and head on

Perhaps as direct an expression as any of the modernist viewpoint is the statement by Simone de Beauvoir, a mid-20th century intellectual and a friend of Jean Paul Sartre: “I don’t want

my life to obey any other will but my own.” If the self is holy, no one or thing has a claim on it or authority over it No room for a social dimension, there

The operation of this kind of thinking can be seen in almost all areas of our society In education, for instance, where most

“advanced” thinking regards grades based on objective standards (like tests) as very “old school” (so to speak) Students should not be evaluated in reference to how much material of a lesson they have mastered, but in reference to themselves, their own

8 Ginsberg, 1967, p 21.

progress, their own needs, their own interests, using portfolios, teacher reports and so on Of course, to teach effectively, we need

to be attentive to a child’s talents and problems; but a child is not well prepared for any level of life by being taught that he or she is the standard of all things

The traditionalist believes that sacredness and legitimacy come from a source external to the self This source or standard is

much more profound, the traditionalist believes, than any philosophy the self could make on its own; in fact, the most important choice the self can make is to choose to follow, to choose to internalize, this external standard

This is not to say that self-fulfillment isn’t important It is People live and work happiest and best when they are involved

in something that comes from the heart Nevertheless, fulfillment shouldn’t be the primary goal because, when it is, all sorts of essential priorities get knocked out of order Besides, self-fulfillment really can’t even be achieved to its most rewarding degree if it is promoted above the external standard, the external sacred Furthermore, the sacred standard is public, communal It applies to all of us, everywhere, by virtue of our common humanity It is a sort of “Law of human physics,” or,

self-“The program best suited to the human hardwiring.” Unlike modernism, which believes that diverse people making diverse

traditionalism believes that it is each person’s best interest and general obligation to submit to the shared standard

There’s a red-flag word if there ever was one: “submit.” Remember, think outside the modernist box This is not a slavish submission that reduces the person; it is the one act the self can make to be really fulfilled It can be thought of more as “joining up,” or “volunteering.” The sacred standard asserts that each person has dignity and free will, and so the standard operates only when freely chosen Rather than surrendering one’s

individuality, embracing the standard is more like choosing sanity over neurosis.

An objective, external standard doesn’t mean that finding what’s right is always a mechanical thing, a simple look at the rule book (though sometimes it is) Human circumstances, motives, and goals are often complex, and require experience and discernment to determine where lines of right and wrong are to

be drawn Sometimes it takes a sharp pencil, indeed However, this doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing; human relationships are not open-ended The right map can get you through the heart of the most complicated city as well as across the open prairie on

an interstate

The modernist’s characteristic objection is that there can be

no universal standard Humanity has so many different moral codes or value systems (we can use those terms interchangeably with “standards”), that no one particular code can claim preeminence Any attempt to persuade other people to conform

to your own morality is bad manners at best, imperialism, or genocide at worst Then, in a characteristic contradiction, the modernist goes on to tell us what standard we ought to follow Since we live in a shrinking world, where people of so many different cultures are thrown together, we should be tolerant and respectful of the different ways of others In other words, when confronted with relativism, be polite

The modernists are correct in their description of the world, but wrong in their prescription for the world

The Rousseauian vision dovetailed almost perfectly with the highest hopes and fondest experiences of the rustic young United States in the late 1700s and early 1800s Thomas Jefferson (and others) defined America as the Rousseauian dream in action, or at least about to begin This idea became the central point of the American perspective Our heroes and saints, both historical and fictional, from Nathan Hale to Malcolm X, from James Fennimore Cooper’s “Hawkeye” to TV cop-show detectives who are always getting into trouble with their superiors, are Rousseauian They stand, arms akimbo, defying the brutal authority of institutions or the smothering conformity of the masses They are modern This is the central myth of our culture, and it is often a good myth, but it doesn’t work as a central myth defining all relationships We need to

know where it works and where it doesn’t

While the modernist, Rousseauian outlook may be appropriate for the occasional bohemian, artist, or reformer, it fails as a general standard for society as a whole This is because

it is so aggressively individualistic that it slides into relativism, and unstable social relations “There are as many truths as there are individual experiences,” “What’s right for you may not be

right for someone else,” and so on Well, yes, up to a point: if you’re decorating your house, or deciding where to go on vacation, even deciding whom to vote for; but after that point,

no Such a notion ultimately divides people It means that I can never know you, and you can never know me, and we can never agree on fundamentals But that is not so In spite of the cul-de-sacs explored so diligently in modern thought, we can see that for practical purposes, at least, there is common ground, and shared experiences

Objectivity unites us Two and two are four, for all of us, and that brings us together We share concrete circumstances, and communal efforts to survive in those circumstances Food, clothing, houses to live in, roads to travel on, all come from communal effort The world has adequate consistency You break through the cul-de-sac as soon as you try to do something with, for, or to, other people

By definition, our social existence depends on others We even owe our physical existence to two other people Understanding the reality of these connections, and the duties (a

dirty word in the modernist lexicon) implied by them, is genuine

awareness

By acknowledging our relations with other people and concrete circumstances, we are halfway out of modernist relativism The step that completes our departure is to see that those relations have structure and requirements; they are consistent To build a bridge or a house, we have to know, and

we can know, how the parts will relate to each other and the

world (gravity, ground formations, weather, etc.) We have to learn and follow the appropriate “world rules” if we want our structure to survive and work There is a joy in looking outward from ourselves and mastering those world rules by complying with them There is plenty of latitude within them to be wonderfully creative — look at all the different ways you could

build a house — but we can be creative only after we have mastered the basic rules so that we can achieve our ends within their framework If we equate creativity with breaking the rules,

or not bothering to learn them, our creative design could fall down and kill someone This “creativity” doesn’t compensate for the collapse If anyone wants to live in a creative ruin, fine, but don’t ask me to join them I’d rather have a roof over my head And as it is with a house or bridge, on a more complex level, so it

is with a family or a nation We have to learn, and conform to, the natural rules I think many of our present social problems are the result of “creative collapse.”

The Rousseauian modernist looks at outcomes differently

He or she thinks that if a person acts authentically (in other words, if a person is doing what he or she is “passionate” about), the results are by definition good, no matter what they may turn out to be If we do our thing, and are really doing it, it is a sacred act; it is also unique, so if we are acting authentically, no one else

has the moral authority to judge us These actions might lead to divorce, perjury, felony, murder, or mayhem, but at least they’d

be honest You see this in movies and literature all the time But isn’t this a narrow — not to say self-serving — definition of

“good”?

Modernism and its cult of “authenticity” ignore the power

of ego in human nature It forgets that ego is not rational, it is not fair, it is inescapable, and everybody has one Ego is a social as well as a psychological force

Because all people, even “primitive” people, have egos, the truth is that the noble savage never did, and doesn’t, exist The hunter-gatherers, villagers, or nomad pastoralists who are usually drafted into service as examples of the noble savage live

in societies that have codes of behavior which are much more binding than our own These people knew, and know, what we

have denied: that we live in a web of relationships and duties that is made imperative by the demands of our collective existence: man is a social being, and cannot thrive alone; they are the traditional cultures mentioned earlier The circle of life doesn’t just concern things we can read about in an ecology text It’s about our hearts, and what we do to maintain or destroy relationship forms within and between ourselves Traditional peoples see the self as not to be “actualized,” but to be dedicated The greatest and most seductive error of human consciousness is

to mistake itself for divinity It is this error that modernism offers and traditionalism guards against

I once read about an old Mayan shaman who was being interviewed by a couple of anthropologists He told them of a certain field that had sacred stones in it It was forbidden to go there and pick those stones up; any person who did so was supposed to die He said that now the young men go into the field, pick up the stones, toss them into the air, and say, “See, we pick up the stones but we don’t die.” The shaman said, “They don’t see that every time they toss a stone into the air, they do die.” Now, for many, and for myself at the time, this story fits a Rousseauian perspective, reinforcing our vague image of “the wise and mysterious old shaman,” and our feelings about Native

Americans, etc But actually the shaman’s statement is as deeply conservative, or at least traditional, as it is perceptive For him, every time one of the youths breaks this apparently meaningless rule, he cuts one more secret strand that balances his inner world, and he takes another step toward becoming a cultureless ego, a raw appetite whose existence leads to nothing productive for anyone else This is the “break-out” that ego is always pushing for He kills his soul, but he has “choices.” In most societies, life is not about choices but about right action

Well, we’ve certainly got choices We pride ourselves on our

bravery, our daring to go beyond the limits Perhaps once we

were brave, but now we’re just foolish We’d gone very far, but now we’ve just gone too far Instead of looking like a Rousseauian Eden, America is beginning to look like Thomas Hobbs’ war of “all against all.” Rousseauian modernism can’t even admit, let alone fix, what ails us If we want to have our society survive (and some Rousseauians don’t want it to, societal institutions being the source of evil), we have to rediscover some unifying principles We have to relearn some of those underlying

“world rules,” and master them by complying Unfortunately, this is the one direction that modernism will resist with all its power, on every level, because it means giving up the vision of unlimited freedom and resurrecting the idea of obligation

It is true that methods of commerce, communication, and travel have accelerated greatly and have created an unprecedented mix of people all over the globe It is also true that as diverse people meet and interact, they will all be better off if they treat each other with respect Where modernism goes wrong is in the idea that, to respect each other, people have to keep their values “in the closet.” This doesn’t create respect; in the long run it diminishes it, because as time passes new generations are raised expecting morality to be a private choice,

as private as income amounts or Social Security numbers Some people miss, or avoid, choosing any morality at all They live purely by expediency There have always been such people, but the modernist social climate inadvertently cultivates them It provides them with a rationale and supports that they did not previously enjoy

The result of this miscalculation is that respect and civility suffer Finally, even the minimal consideration of others that is necessary for peaceful social interactions breaks down The balance that remains in society at that point is the result of mutual threat more than mutual respect The effect modernism achieves is the exact opposite of the effect it intends

The dilemma that we have to face, then, is that we do have a shrinking world, and a diversifying country, and we have to admit that the call for mutual respect is correct, but we also see that the solution modernism proposes for the supposed lack of common values is to have no solution at all, and then to call the stumbling in the dark that results — “progress.”

We do need to make positive connections with other cultures and ways of life, but because the world is now so diverse,

we need to do it in a framework that works for all of us, not in a moral void that works for none of us But what framework — something positive, not just a modernist abnegation — can we find to work for all of us? Ultimately, the problem is religious How do we find an overarching moral/social standard that has muscle enough to be effective, and yet fits our goal of inclusiveness?

Many people today are recognizing that although there appears to be a great variety in human moral codes, there are broad underlying themes that are common to most By comparing and grouping the parallel expressions of belief and definitions of virtue from different religions and cultures, we can recognize what those underlying themes are Those themes can

be our unifying framework, our common moral heritage

We don’t have to consider inversions like Nazism and Satanism, because such negative systems are too destructive to support widespread, prolonged cultures (though they can do a lot of damage while they are in power) Any system that brings such obvious harm to the society — and therefore to the individuals as well — that takes it up is obviously not “A program best suited to the human hardwiring.”

A pioneer in our quest to discover the shared themes of the world’s moral traditions was the English writer, C S Lewis His observations can be enormously helpful to us A friend of J R R Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings), Lewis taught at Oxford

and Cambridge Universities from the 1920s to the 1960s He was uniquely suited to be our guide He had been an atheist, a rationalist — a modernist — but as he sought to pick apart the claims of religion, his intellectual quest brought him to a deeper understanding of the requirement of a greater good — the requirement to look beyond our individual good Religion is one

of the primary ways by which humanity has addressed this need Lewis had a broad knowledge of history and literature; he had a powerfully analytical mind that could digest complex sets of ideas down to their basic points He could also write, using language and examples from everyday life

On the idea that humanity has different moralities, he comments:

I ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.9

Of course, we have trouble imagining such a place, such a morality In large issues, he is saying, there may be such a thing

as no morality, but not a different morality In fact, he is saying

that humanity has one moral system Lewis observed that most of

the essential points of particular moral systems are congruent In his book, The Abolition of Man, in the appendix “The Tao,” he helps

us to see that under the superficial differences — the variety of costumes, if you will — human morality has the same basic form

We will return to some of C S Lewis’s work later when we look

at this basic moral heritage in greater detail Lewis called it by several names: “The Tao,” “Natural [human] Law,” and, “First Principles.” Because it is so clearly descriptive, let’s borrow his term “First Principles” for our use

9 Lewis, C., 1971, p 19.

Lewis also explains why values need to be shared He argues against the libertarian view of the world:

There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by cheating or bullying The other is when things go wrong inside the individual — when different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another.10

To illustrate both the inner and outer need for right values and actions, he likens us to ships on a voyage:

The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and sec-ondly, if each ship is sea worthy, and has her engines in good order As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy very long On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order, they will not be able to avoid collisions 11

When a man says about something he wants to do, “It can’t

be wrong because it doesn’t do anyone else any harm” He is thinking it doesn’t matter what his ship is like inside, provided that he does not run into the next ship What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill-temper and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? 12

We could add insobriety and laziness to that list of saboteurs Today, our rules on paper are more advanced than

10 Ibid., p 70.

11 Ibid., p 70 & 71.

12 Ibid, p 70.

ever, but we pay almost no attention to the real content of our character, the interior of our ship.

Modernism tells us that we are each the captain of our own private yacht, sailing under no national flag, subject to no maritime code Let the rudder chains rust, let the barnacles grow thick, let the ropes lie tangled on the deck, it doesn’t matter as long as we don’t ram anyone; but, as Lewis says, common sense and experience show us that if we neglect or deny our natural seafaring duties, we will end up ramming one another.

Modernism not only won’t accept this, it suggests that if

we sail just over the horizon, we’ll find our own personal ocean;

we won’t have to worry about watching out for others any more

As the Rocky Horror Picture Show (and countless other modern

urgings) tells us, “Don’t dream it; do it,” or as Nike puts it, more succinctly, just, “Do it.” Watch where you point that dream; it might be loaded

The fact is that there are various real conditions associated with navigating through life; one of them is other people, and another is how our inner condition hinders or facilitates our dealing with other people Modernism tells us we don’t have any explicit duties as long as we can support ourselves and our families, and not break the law However, with no explicit duties, we end up breaking ourselves and our families, and not supporting the law If we are aware of these duties, and accept them, we will sail the seas in harmony with others; if we are unaware of them, or deny them, we will clutter up the sea lanes with our “crazy old tubs.”

To get a sharper picture of modernism, let’s listen to another Lewis, this time a modernist voice In his 1920 classic,

Main Street, Sinclair Lewis takes aim at small-town America’s

smugness, cruelty, and hypocrisy The story tells of Carol Kennicott, a lively, intelligent young woman interested in art, literature, and progressive causes, who meets and marries a

small-town doctor in her native city, St Paul, Minnesota She moves with him to his home in rural Gopher Prairie, population 3,000, and she struggles to accommodate herself to life there Shortly after she arrives, Carol takes a tour of her new community:

When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes, she had completely covered the town, east and west, north and south; and she stood at the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue and despaired

Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its a-half wooden residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk, its huddle of Fords and lumber-wagons, was too small to absorb her She wanted to run, fleeing from the encroaching prairie, demanding the security of a great city.13

story-and-Here, it isn’t small town smugness and hypocrisy that drive her to despair; it’s just small-town small It’s the size and

condition of the town itself, the lack of amenities and diversions

to which she is accustomed Carol fits the following description:

The city is intellect The Megalopolis is “free” lect The sly-shrewdness of the country and the intelligence

intel-of the megalopolis are two forms intel-of waking-consciousness between which reciprocal understanding is scarcely possi-ble.14

However small the town may be, it is illuminating that Lewis says it can’t absorb her Carol, in other words, is too big for it In fact, Gopher Prairie has three thousand people, yet in the modernist perspective, Carol is too big for it Here we see the modernist spirit, wanting to tower, independent and unencumbered, over community Carol — modernist — educated and huge on one side; Gopher Prairie — several

13 Lewis, S., 1980, pp 36 & 37.

14 Spengler, 1926, pp 96 & 97.

thousand tiny souls — smaller in sum than Carol alone, on the other.

This is life as lived from the “divine self” perspective, modernism’s chief allure The divine self wants to look down on the world from its own private Olympus It wants to throw thunderbolts and gather pleasures wherever it pleases The problem is, how can we justify this? While we renounce traditional values, most of us still unconsciously respond to their echoes, their shadows; and we can’t quite simply crown ourselves, Napoleon-like, without a qualm There has to be some rationale that hides the essential selfishness of the Olympian idea from others, and from ourselves If we think we deserve to

be a god, we need some pretty good public relations to sell the idea The way we do this is by proposing that each person is

entitled to his own mountain peak This puts us in the position of

a giver, not a taker So liberal, so generous Carol even says to a friend in Gopher Prairie who asks her what she wants:

We want our Utopia now — and we’re going to try our hands at it All we want is — everything for all of us! For every housewife, and every longshoreman, and every Hindu nation-alist, and every teacher We want everything We shan’t get it

So we shan’t ever be content — 15

Such compassion, such solidarity! Modernism puts us in the enviable position of being for humanity, but not of humanity

We can be intellectuals, advocates of the masses, but also free of, and superior to them We “see through” all those old religious fairy tales, all those quaint, unsystematic beliefs, and that proves our natural entitlement over the lesser lights that still believe in them And we deny to ourselves that we feel this way because our stated aims are so democratic We believe in a sort of

15 Lewis, S., 1980, p 197.

spiritual-political Manifest Destiny of the individual will, wherein everything becomes a choice, and we can choose Like a Roman emperor languidly reclining on a couch, indicating with economy of movement as he drops his forefinger in the direction

of one delicacy or another, we allow ourselves everything

Why such a harsh judgment? Why not just take Carol at her word? I admit Carol believes what she says She hopes that everybody can be fulfilled, but her hopes are one thing and the results of her behavior are very different We are looking at a deep contradiction, wherein stated aims and results are worlds apart When modernism calls us to right injustices, it usually means that we can challenge other people, out there, to change

their behavior We’re rarely asked to point the cannons at

ourselves, and face any real sacrifice Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson can fight for world peace and social injustice, but they personally aren’t about to take any vows of poverty, chastity and obedience We can sense the fraud when we try to determine what Carol will pay for her vision; what is she willing to give up? Evidently, she isn’t willing to give up much She wants to remake the town, ignite interests in people that they don’t have, her

interests; she wants to broaden intellects and refine manners, and if she were to achieve her goals, she’s the one who gets She

gets the stimulation she desires What does Gopher Prairie get?

It gets Carol’s vision of an advanced community And even if some of the advances are objectively beneficial, resulting in such things as a lower infant mortality rate, a decrease in domestic violence, a decrease in murder, and suicides, what would Carol pay to achieve them? Carol can hardly endure her marriage to an unadventurous but practical and even-handed guy, and she eventually leaves him for a period of time, only to return because

of limited options She wants to save the world, but won’t swallow her ambitions to save her marriage — a much smaller challenge than the world

Carol wants more than Gopher Prairie can give her She wants beauty and interests and stimulating friends These are enjoyments that most of us desire Is it really possible, though, that Gopher Prairie could provide none of these? Were there no tender, friendly hearts with an intellect that matched her own; were there no interesting minds, no areas of exploration? I submit that to the degree that in the novel none of these were available, Lewis was indulging in propaganda Assuredly, there would be smugness, cruelty, and hypocrisy in Gopher Prairie, but to suggest that a sensitive, generous soul could find nothing more than that does not ring true After all, Gopher Prairie is the same rural Minnesota milieu that Garrison Keillor has peopled with pure hearts and down-home sensibilities Keillor has illuminated the region in soft nostalgic colors to present a deep contrast to modern commercial life Admittedly, Keillor’s portrayal is the other end of the spectrum, all that is soft and fuzzy brought out for artistic and entertainment value, sort of a Norman Rockwell in words; but the fact is that the soft and fuzzy is there, alongside of the unyielding and myopic, just as it

is anywhere, wherever one lives Lewis is presenting Carol Kennicott’s problems as a modernist morality tale: the traditionalist is stifling and self-serving; the modern is liberating and generous Such a black and white portrayal is propaganda.Lewis does not present Carol’s point of view as the perfect standard, or even as his own opinion; there are several counts upon which she is revealed to be naive and inexperienced But Lewis does equate Carol’s viewpoint with the most wide-awake, objective viewpoint available to us in the story For instance, when Carol is coming in to Gopher Prairie by train with her husband at the beginning of the story, her impressions are presented to us as fact:

And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an ment of all the hamlets which they had been passing Only to the eyes of a Kennicott [her husband] was it exceptional The huddled low wooden houses broke the plains scarcely more than would a hazel thicket! The fields swept up to it, past it It was unprotected and unprotecting; there was no dignity in it, nor any hope of greatness Only the tall red grain elevator and a few tinny church steeples rose from the mass It was a frontier camp It was not a place to live in, not possibly, not conceiv-ably.16

enlarge-Carol’s impressions are Lewis’s description of reality But what a string of judgments presented as truth! Suppose Carol had been religious Suppose Lewis had been religious She might have felt, he might have written seeing the “few tinny church steeples,” something like, “raw as it is, at least there are several places where God is worshipped, where the word of Jesus brings comfort to the people with such hard lives.” The church steeples would have had such a different meaning Presenting the meaning given as objective reality is propaganda Lewis picked

up and helped develop a trend: Carol has had countless brothers and sisters in our literature and pop culture We have come to accept this modernist propaganda; we accept its judgment as the template, the floor plan, of “real life.”

Yet, isn’t there something adolescent in Carol’s position? Isn’t it rather like that of the precocious teen who sits, burning with frustration and wounded pride, at the Thanksgiving-dinner table, surrounded by relatives who he or she knows are dumber than dirt, unable to appreciate the “higher things”?

In fact, there’s an adolescent dimension to modernism altogether It’s adolescent in its chronic anti-authoritarianism; it’s adolescent in its romanticism; it’s adolescent in its love of the exotic and the extreme; it’s adolescent in its lack of appreciation

16 Ibid., p 30.

for what things of real value — a happy family; peaceful streets; respectful social interactions — actually cost It’s adolescent in its expectations that the world ought to move aside (or fundamentally change) so that the individual can pursue his or her particular desires As an old Jefferson Airplane song (“ReJoyce”) bluntly put it: “I’d rather have my country die for me.” What are these higher things to which Carol and the adolescent lean? Ultimately, they are just the childish urge to live free of consequences They are the urge to have exciting love affairs, but never any children The urge to let the mind and the spirit (and the body) be intoxicated by traditionally “off-limits” precincts, but to suffer no ill effects, no destabilization of personality, no endangering of physical health They are the urge

to be constantly, or at least frequently, stimulated by aesthetics, but to be satisfied that it will be other peoples lives — not their

own — which need to be deadened and dedicated to such utilitarian pursuits as to keep the lights burning, keep the trucks running, keep the toilets flushing Sure, we progressives can decry such burdens and urge the proletariat to “Rage at the machine.” But none of us can live without it If we change anything, it should be ourselves The progressives offer not much more than a future of Van Gogh exhibits and sexual choices (There’s the real selling point!) The liberal heroes of today tend

to be living in the lap of luxury Nelson Mandela and other exceptional cases certainly have suffered personally to advance their causes, but modernist saints like Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, Billy Joel, and Bill Gates are more likely to burnish their images and benefit from their selfless gestures By comparison, the traditionalists warn you ahead of time: you have to give it up, give it all up, yourself and your ego related aspirations, if you are

to achieve a victory for humanity Robert Redford still enjoys fame and fortune, while raising money for international peace and justice; traditionalists are more likely to sacrifice their

personal pleasures and material rewards to forward their vision

of a better world Judge each position by what its adherents are willing to invest, and by the outcomes of their teachings, not the sublimity of their sayings

David Horowitz, a 60s radical who eventually saw these contradictions and reevaluated his beliefs, writes:

It is a matter not of politics, but of self The moment I gave

up my radical beliefs was the moment I had to look at myself for the very first time At me As I really was — not suspended above everyone else as an avatar of their future salvation, but standing beside them as an equal, as one of them Not one whom history had chosen for its vanguard, but a speck of ordi-nary human dust

Modernism doesn’t want to admit that its client is, “A speck of ordinary human dust.”17

17 Horowitz, 1990, pp 328 & 329.