Things Are Not What They Seem
Things have come unmoored. There’s been this severing of reality from its referents. It is now plain for anyone to see. Films, news, ads, elections all seem increasingly detached from reality. Is this what sociologist Jean Baudrillard had in mind decades ago when he coined the term ‘hyperreality’?1Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, Semiotext(e), 1981 Paul Kingsnorth thinks so.
Progressive politics and capitalist economics merged and now rule everything. Surely even Baudrillard didn’t see that that coming. Everything is turned on its head. And that tends to make us resentful of practically all our previous sources of authority — elites, the patriarchy, the Church, the Cathedral.
Instead of worshiping timeless and changeless perfection as man once did, changing the world, i.e. Progress, became the sole religion. We in the West came to unconditionally revere this spirit which incorporates itself into humanity in hopes of changing it. But what we’re changing ourselves into is increasingly unclear.
Now the myth of progress is collapsing just like all the other grand narratives.2E.g., Providence; man in the image of God; one nation indivisible; the idea of a promised land where something better awaits us and where actual strategies exist that we can employ to get us there; and even the notion that there is just one truth and that it is discoverable. I’m learning to see wokeness as a grief reaction. My heart too is filled with grief. We’re all wandering among the ruins of Babel unable to communicate. The culture war is being fought among these ruins over the spoils of Progress that never fully materialized. How does one mourn the loss of something not quite realized? It’s like the loss of a stillborn. The ideological right and left both mourn even though they aren’t quite sure what it is they lost. Perhaps they mourn the end of the arc of progress. Or maybe it has to do with being displaced. As Kingsnorth says, “The West is my home — but the West has also eaten my home.”3Paul Kingsnorth, In the Desert of the Real, The Abbey of Misrule
So here we are hurling toward dissolution. The artificial world, this parody that we built, collides with itself. Truth itself is even disputed.4One cannot imagine a more pointless debate. False progress smashes into false traditionalism. Spiritual unity is only a distant memory. Schools and churches, emblems of progress and tradition, turn out to be hollow shells of the real things. This leaves us in a state of confused longing. We end up turning on each other in our grief. But our anger is misdirected. We must look instead onto a higher plane.
This is a spiritual war, not a culture war. Our immanently-minded selves have a hard time seeing this. But circumstances force us to consider how we are to respond. A spiritual war requires an entirely different type of warrior. It requires men and women with hearts in their chests who have the fortitude to build communities and to defend them; to despise comfort in order to love the unlovable. Community is the antidote to isolation. Solidarity displaces fragmentation.
Michael Warren Davis implores us to be chivalrous:
Our liberal democracies are now succumbing to the same twin errors — decadence and gnosticism — that destroyed the Roman Empire. Within a few centuries, nothing of the old order will remain. We Christians will have to rebuild civilization from its ruins… The fact of the matter is that we Christians, as much as our neo-pagan countrymen, are decadent. We’re dangerously unprepared for the coming Dark Age… Men in the West, and especially Christian Men, have a duty to prepare ourselves… We have a duty to harden ourselves — physically, morally, and spiritually — so we can protect ourselves, our families, our communities, and the Holy Mother Church… To be soft, cowardly, or weak is now positively immoral… This trial is a gift, and we should thank Him for it. May we be happy warriors, fighting (as Chesterton said) not because we hate what’s in front of us, but because we love what’s behind us…5G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, Jan. 14, 1911 Great Christian men of past ages would have relished this chance to prove their fidelity to Christ and His Church. And I’m convinced that our grandsons and great-grandsons “shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here.”6 William Shakespeare, The St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V They’ll envy this faithful remnant: the valiant knights who lived and died with that sacred banner in their hands, who kept the holy Faith alive.7Michael Warren Davis, The Francis Option, Crisis Magazine, 2 Oct. 2020
We are bound to suffer at this.8Philippians 1:29 Nobody likes to hear that. We tend to think that anything uncomfortable ought to be avoided. But real progress is sacrifice. True tradition means restoring our humanity. Life itself is a gift. God is the Gift Giver. And we were meant to be be gift-givers in His image.
So we simply offer ourselves. We dare to love and to freely share what knowledge we have. And still our own knowledge is never depleted. When we discover new medicines or find ways to feed more people this benefits everyone. The abundance spreads like fire. We conjure up all sorts of things through our intellect. We toil in service to others regardless of whether we are made second class citizens or even slaves. We appear to be toiling alone, but really we’re blending the creativity of our mind with the creativity of others. We’re blending the labor of our body with the labor of others. That creative service is generative. It’s communal. It’s relational. Every product, every purchase, is a touch point with millions of others.
We understand this is a world of substantial hurt and dysfunction. It is a broken world that cries out for order. Will we look on those who despise us and spit on us with generosity and compassion, seeing something in them that they cannot see themselves? Are we willing to give ourselves away to keep that memory alive? It might sound like drudgery, but it’s really more like a perpetual feast. That’s because we see the not yet in the now. And that hope also begins to spread. The odds are against us, but where there is memory and desire there is hope.
Photo credit: “The Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529) V” by A.Davey is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.