Pollution

Environmentalists worry about the pollution of the planet and suggest all sorts of ways to correct this. I sympathise. It's clear that we are laying waste the world around us and, for all our fine words and good intentions, this looks set to continue. Our desire for a comfortable life with all the benefits of modernity exceeds our ability to make sacrifices. However, the pollution that concerns us is usually that of the natural world. But there is another, far greater, threat to humanity than any physical pollution which is the pollution of the mind and heart or spiritual pollution. Who worries about that?

As a matter of fact, I'm sure plenty of people do but they are not in the mainstream. They are not in government or the media. They are not in politics or science, they are not self-righteous activists and they are not normally given any kind of platform at all. Even, I have to say, many religious leaders seem reluctant to draw attention to this kind of pollution because it would mean condemning the world, and modern religious leaders are strangely reluctant to do that.

What form does this pollution take? Principally, it comes through the way we view the world and ourselves. Since we have denied God we have moved increasingly to a vision of ourselves as material beings who owe no sense of gratitude to a loving Creator. We belong to ourselves, and what we are is what we appear, on the surface, to be. A physical body and a mind that is the outcome of mindlessness. We have the right to make our own reality instead of coordinating ourselves to an already existing reality.

That is the root of the pollution and its chief cause is science as that is the authority on which other, more actively polluting, agents justify their existence. Without the authority of materialistic science these other agents would not have arisen in the way they have. Although it might not always be obvious, they gain their initial inspiration from materialism, and materialism is the consequence of science or, better put, scientism since science itself is not necessarily materialistic. It only becomes so when it denies forms of knowledge and reality which are not accessible to its methods.

The pollution is spread through education which is totally based on materialism, and is not seen as functioning in the light of a spiritual reality. When education is severed from the sense of the transcendent, it becomes destructive and actually 'diseducates'. That is what it does now, and to a steadily increasing extent.

It is spread through social and political ideologies that do not put themselves as existing within the greater framework of spiritual truth. Any form of politics that seeks to make a better world without regard to the reality of God is detrimental to true human values, never mind spiritual ones. The false ideologies that seek worldly progress without giving full priority to spiritual matters always harm the soul and end up in inevitable failure. The social movements that have as their aim the reconstruction of human beings away from their traditional norms damage both society and the individual. They favour short term (apparent) gain for one section of society over long term harm of the whole.

Perhaps most of all the pollution is spread through the arts, the media and contemporary culture. No one can get away from this. It is everywhere and proclaims the universal message of materialism. That is to say, the many branches of the arts and the media, and practically all of the culture of the present day, stem from the same materialistic assumptions. Even when there is a spiritual or pseudo-spiritual content to the product the real roots of it are materialistic. This is the case for popular culture where it is obvious but it is also the case for the more highbrow variants whose sophistication disguises their spiritual vacuity.

How can we counter this all-pervasive pollution? First of all, we must recognise it and, having done that, we must seek to insulate ourselves from it. Avoid corrupting music, avoid films with no moral compass. Be very circumspect in your engagement with the media. These are things not to do but there are also things you should do and, first and foremost, there is prayer. Speak to God as to a friend or parent. Confide in him and ask for his help in the daily struggle. Examine your soul to see where you have fallen short of what you know you should be.

Reading old books can be a purifying experience. When I lived in India without television or radio the only entertainment available was books and the only books I had access to were in the local club where there was nothing printed before 1945. So for 5 years that's more or less all I read. I did buy occasional books myself but these were all on spiritual subjects. But I read novels by authors I'd never heard of, and most of them were good. Practically all of them had a religious sensibility, either openly so or as an assumed backdrop to the story. It was like entering a different world with quite different assumptions about life.

Seek out the natural world. More and more of that is being destroyed but the natural world is the reflection of God, albeit in a fallen state. As we experience it directly less and less it's no wonder we lose faith in a creator.

I read an article recently which said that the IQ scores of young people born after 1975 have been falling at the rate of 7 points per generation. This is after a fairly long period of regular rises of 3 points a decade, probably due to environmental factors. One can argue about the whys and wherefores of this, whether it is true and what it means if it is. But I can't help noticing that this period coincides with a massive degradation of culture. It is a strong indication of one of the effects of pollution. Unless we take steps to redress the situation it will just get worse.