The modern world is fundamentally superficial. I am not simply talking about the childish obsession of many adults with an ever more degraded popular culture, and nor do I just refer to the ordinary person though I include him. I am talking about present day thinkers, the intellectual class, the movers and shakers in all areas of life. Hardly any of these people are really serious. They are just playing games, more concerned with power, fame, money and influence than truth.
A serious person thinks about life and death and grapples with what those might mean because the meaning of death is directly related to the meaning of life. If you say that death has no meaning, it's just the end, curtains, goodbye, then you have washed your hands of spiritual responsibility. You have trivialised life because you have denied death, and, yes, you have denied it because you have reduced it to nothing and you can only do that by rejecting what it is to be human. For a human being is like an iceberg though with this important difference. It's an upside down iceberg with the perceived part the lowest part and the hidden part, which nevertheless supports the whole, stretching up above and beyond what is seen and known. The boundary between the two can be melted occasionally in life but is only fully crossed at death.
Human beings come into this world because, unlike in the spiritual domain from whence we derive, we do not know God directly here. We have to find him. We have to choose him. Everything in nature obeys God's laws automatically except man. We have a natural part which does obey as it must but a human being is also a person so there is necessity but there is also freedom. God has renounced his supreme power to give us some power and he has done so because of love in which there can be no compulsion.
There are fewer and fewer serious people these days, people really willing to think for themselves and look life squarely in the face. We are too distracted by phenomena and the shiny trinkets of modern technology to try to understand what a human being really is. Some people do seek a spiritual answer but the fact is not all forms of spirituality are equally valid. There are some forms that seek to reduce human beings purely to a kind of naked spirit, void of form and individuality. But this is a return to our origins without having learnt the lessons of creation and the material world, and if God had wanted this for us he would never have bothered sending us out into this world, separated from him in order to find him again and know him consciously for who and what he is. There is a higher form of spirituality which includes the spiritual and the individual and the fruits of this are love and creativity, something that pure spirit does not know. For the love that advocates of the pure spirit path talk of is not really this spiritual love at all. They have borrowed the concept from theistic religion while rejecting what makes it possible. Their love is impersonal but impersonal love is a contradiction in terms. God's love is not impersonal and directed equally to everything. He loves more what opens itself more fully to his love and reflects it back.
As the world progresses further and further into what is effectively chaos it is critical that people become serious. Don't accept what you are told by authority without submitting it to a thorough intuitive assessment. Even if everyone you know goes along with the agenda that is no reason for you to follow. Hold up everything you are told to the truth of Christ and see whether it stands or falls in that light. The time is coming when Christ will be the only serious thing left.
It is very noticeable that the supposedly serious books published in recent decades are extraordinarily superficial compared with books of the past. About a hundred years ago, popular authors such as Chesterton were tackling fundamental matters; and even the atheists such as Shaw, Wells and Orwell were far deeper than anything now.
ReplyDeleteEquivalent modern authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, NN Taleb, Jordan Peterson (to mention only the highest status) are merely operating at the level of self-help and rules of thumb.
Maybe Rupert Sheldrake is comparable (e.g. he discusses Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics, but he is regarded by the Establishment as a flake or a nutcase).
But there is no doubt that discourse is much, much shallower now than then.
Yes, and you often get the impression with people such as the ones you mention and others of a similar ilk that they are less concerned with the problems than with themselves as sages who expound on the problems. That may be unfair but it is the impression that many of the ones who find public success give.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about two intellectuals that I like (Roger Scrutton and Milan Kundera) and I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me about these authors, no matter how valid their insights may be.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that was bothering me is that I find them shallow, fundamentally unserious. Scrutton wanted to be a conservative without taking a position about God. Kundera criticized communism and totalitarism without addressing the big questions of existence. They emphasized play and dialogue, but these are means, not ends. This does not happen with other kind of atheists, who I find them serious.
(Sorry, now that I am writing this, I am reading the first comment by Bruce Charlton that says exactly the same as me. My comment is redundant. But I will send it anyway only to show that it's not only you and Dr. Charlton who think this way)
Your comment is good. Thanks. Two people saying a similar thing in a slightly different way reinforces the point. I don't know Kundera other than by name but your point about Roger Scruton echoes what I felt about him. I respected him for standing up to the left but there was a little bit of the dilettante about him.
ReplyDeleteWas Nietzsche, despite his obvious flaws, one of the last serious modern thinkers?
ReplyDeleteKundera - I liked him in my 20's. Scruton - agreed.
Luckily, we have the rich voices of the past.
Yes, we certainly are lucky to have access to the wisdom of the past. This strikes me as another indication that we are living in the end times, when everything from the cycle is gathered together and made available. Our ancestors and forebears never really had this privilege, by no means to the extent that we do anyway.
ReplyDeleteNietzsche was certainly serious and may have acted as a means of clearing away intellectual and spiritual dead wood. Perhaps that was his specific mission.