A corrupted world is incoherent. The incoherence seen throughout modern society was the topic of a previous post. Corruption is the topic of this one. All societies deal with some level of corruption. There will always be grifter politicians and dirty cops. That doesn’t excuse such behavior. Corrupt authorities destroy trust and when unchecked can have a ruinous effect on society. But even more concerning is when the corruption gets internalized.
Self-naming is the disease that corrupts all things. I’m not necessarily talking about using a pseudonym or even legally changing one’s name. I’m talking about self-definition. It’s the idea that our identity is something we simply proclaim. We engage in personal branding and the creation of online personas. These are just self-serving attempts to bend reality.1We cannot bend the structure of the universe. This is like bending a ruler in front of our own face. Eventually, it snaps back into our face. This idea that we create our own reality is the hallmark of a psychopath. We are in the worst position of anyone to describe ourselves. How can one know what is important and interesting about oneself, and what validates our contributions to the world, but through other people?
Nevertheless, we are catechized into a self-naming (anti)culture that encourages individuals to be selfishly hedonistic, yet somehow expects society to be charitable and just. Culture is seen as an oppressive force rather than something formative. Instead of teaching various practices and disciplines and molding character to prepare individuals to take their place in society, schools and churches become places of performance where people display themselves to the world. These institutions become, as Carl Trueman says, “places where one goes to perform, not be formed – or, perhaps better, where one goes to be formed by performing.”2Carl B. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
The individual becomes his own de facto meaning maker. We re-imagine the self having an inward focus. Man is seen as the “autonomous ruler of himself, able to define right and wrong and frame statutes according to whatever he defines as just.”3Herbert Schlossberg, ‘Idols for Destruction’ This expressive individual gains authenticity through public displays of inner desires. Truth becomes an obstacle to maintaining our sovereignty. So we draft reason into our service to come up with ways to satisfy our desires.4This is why journalism, science, and justice have all become conclusion driven. Sentiment becomes the supreme source of authority. The word ‘just’ describes whatever is emotionally desirable. Virtue is whatever we find pleasant or useful. Since personal preferences are beyond the bounds of rational scrutiny, falsehoods about the nature of reality go unquestioned. Any consequences from these lies are blamed on others due to the inability to see any connection between beliefs and outcomes.
The story we’re told is that there is no overarching Story. Its central myth is that boundaries are to be transgressed. The hero is the one who transgresses them in pursuit of their authentic Self. We become our real Self by casting off all restraints. The highest good in this contemporary mind is freedom. Any other value that impinges on one’s freedom is seen as a fetter. We employ personal branding and online personas in a self-serving attempt to bend reality. Those who don’t play along are “denying our existence.” Any unhappiness we feel must be because somebody, somewhere, is imposing upon us. We are to embrace open-ended possibility, the story goes, even to the extent that we get to choose whether we’re male or female. Technology, along with the power of the will, shall force the body into compliance.
This absolute autonomy and self-sufficiency is an illusion. In reality, our identity is enmeshed in a network of human relations. It’s a negotiated social agreement between ourselves and others. I might like to think of myself as a great writer and an awesome dad. But that isn’t for me to say. In fact, I’m probably the least qualified person to assess myself. You’d have to ask others if you want to know about me. Being a dad isn’t a state of mind, it’s a reality. And only those who witness me as a father would be able to say whether I do it well. The idea that we get to pick our own pronouns is just as absurd as me choosing my own adjectives.5The Babylon Bee has a great parody of this.
We are participants in something larger than ourselves. People don’t exist as isolated individual minds. We exist among other people. We’re born into a world that we didn’t create which is already saturated with meaning. For example, we didn’t create the language we use. We didn’t choose to be someone’s son or daughter. Language, culture, relationships, and technologies all predate us, and these things shape us to a large extent. We are individuals embedded in a society. You have your story. I have my story. We’re both part of a larger story. When our stories do not integrate properly into the larger story that’s when incoherence arises.
Similarly, freedom is a good that must integrate with other goods. Freedom must accept limits. Otherwise we are free only to the degree that we are free from constraint. In other words we are only free to the extent that we have power over nature and other people. We end up in a war against limits. This type of emancipation comes down to the sheer will to overpower. This is, “the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power” that Václav Havel experienced all too well in communist Czechoslovakia.6Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless Just as Herbert Schlossberg warned, when individual autonomy is affirmed and sentiment becomes the final arbiter “there can be no complaint when the grossest brutalities are committed in the name of serving the poor, the nation, the purity of the race, the supremacy of religion, or other values that are deemed to be ‘high.’ …There is no bar to Hitler. There is no bar in sentiment to killing some people if it benefits others.”7Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction This idea that one is free to determine good and evil for himself merely repeats the serpent’s blandishments. This perpetual war on limits inevitably makes servants of us all.
Truth is what sets us free. Without truth there is no freedom. Sartre talks about man being condemned to freedom when he has no nature other than absolute freedom.8Cf. J. Pieper, “Kreaturlichkeit und menschliche Natur. Anmerkungen zum philosophischen Ansatz von J P Sartre,” in “Uber die Schwierigkeit, heute zu glauben” (Munchen, 1974), 304-21. This pure unadulterated freedom of the will has no direction or measure. In other words, it has no truth. There is no right or wrong, only what is preferable. This is not supreme enhancement, but rather the frustration of life. As Cardinal Ratzinger put it, “Liberation from the truth does not produce pure freedom, but abolishes it.”9Cardinal Ratzinger, ‘Truth and Freedom.’ Communio. Volume 23.1 (1996) This is damnation. It does not redeem man, but rather makes him a “miscarried creature.” When we rebel against our own being we rebel against truth, and this leads to a self contradictory existence. In other words, Hell.
True being has a true nature. Our being is interwoven with the being of others. We all begin life from and through another. Inside our mother we are in physical unity with her and yet we retain our distinct self-hood. Cardinal Ratzinger describes this insane predicament in which this being-with compels the being of the mother to become a being-for which contradicts her own independence.10ibid. Even after birth we remain dependent on the ‘being-for‘ of others. An infant is still a “from” that requires a “for.” As adults we retain these “from” and “with” aspects while we’re continuously thrown into the role of being-for. By merely participating in the economy we offer ourselves in service to countless others.
Man’s nature, this being-from, -with, and -for, is the truth of his humanity. We take for granted the being-for aspect of others. We all recognize the fiduciary responsibilities of those around us. Our parents and our spouse have certain obligations to us. But yet we prefer not to be from or for, but rather wholly at liberty. This liberation theology is a fiction we tell ourselves. And in this fiction all must be equal in every way. Tocqueville observed that this radical equalization reinforces the mythical elevation of Self. Individuals who are equal owe nothing to anyone and expect nothing in return.11“They acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine their whole destiny is in their own hands. Thus, not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his decedents and separates his contemporaries from him.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Man’s radical cry for freedom is a cry for “liberation from his own essence” in order to become a new species of man. Yuval Noah Harari and others celebrate this new man as Homo Deus.12Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow In their view man is to be as God. And the one thing an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God lacks is limits. This new man depends on nothing and no one. And through science he will even triumph over nature. This is not an image of God, but rather an idol. God is Being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and Being-with (Holy Spirit). Thus, human freedom exists in the ordered communion of freedoms of being-from, -for, and -with. We are in God’s image only when we constitute this -for, -with, and -from pattern.
Liberty as the annulment of norms and extension of individual freedom towards complete emancipation is a false freedom. “Freedom to destroy oneself or to destroy another is not freedom but its demonic parody.”13Cardinal Ratzinger, ‘Truth and Freedom.’ Communio. Volume 23.1 (1996) True freedom is enjoyment of the highest good. Corrupting the truth of our nature ultimately denies truth. Without truth there can be no objective good. And without “the double constellation of the True and the Good and their inseparable relation to one another” there is nothing left for Beauty to circumscribe. But they will not allow themselves to be separated and banned from their third sister without taking her along with them in an act of mysterious vengeance.14This is a restating, somewhat in reverse, of Balthasar’s observation on the relationship between goodness, truth, and beauty. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics,” Volume 1, “Seeing the Form,” T&T Clark, Edinburgh 1982, p. 18 We must rescue the three sisters of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty if we hope to endure.